Two Lovers

Let me draw your attention to a scene. Not very special. Subtle would be the word. Ahem. Michelle is just back from the hospital, having suffered from a miscarriage. Leonard is sitting by her side, tracing out those three words on her arm, as she drifts into a sedated sleep. He loves her, but she doesn’t know it. Not yet. But does he either? Is she just a way out of his loneliness? Plausibly.

What’s remarkable about the scene is not its clichéd poetic beauty, but the fact that it is embedded in the very brutal reality of life. It’s daytime and the sunlight is sharp in its intensity. No expressions playing on their faces remain hidden. There are sounds that are obstinately stealing into the room. The dull thud of the music from a party close by. The shouts, catcalls, and bickering of kids playing in the streets. The spirited laughter and animated conversations of the party-people.

The walls are straining under the pressure to keep these harsh realities outside, where they belong, so that the two lovers can stay frozen in time. But they still manage to creep in. And they make us realise that no matter how poetic, tragic, or romantic the moment might seem to you, life won’t let you stay trapped in it. Even fleetingly. It is relentless, cruel, and insensitive. It won’t stop for you to get back on your feet while you wallow in your own private prosaic moment. And that, my friends, sucks.

Surely You're Joking

A poet once said - The whole universe is in a glass of wine. We will probably never know in what sense he meant that, for poets do not write to be understood. But it is true that if we look at a glass of wine closely enough we see the entire universe. There are the things of physics: the twisting liquid which evaporates depending on the wind and weather, the reflections in the glass, and our imagination adds the atoms. The glass is a distillation of the earth's rocks, and in it's composition we see the secrets of the universe's age, and the evolution of stars. What strange array of chemicals are in the wine? How did they come to be? There are the ferments , the enzymes, the substrates, and the products. There in wine is found the great generalization: all life is fermentation. How vivid is the claret, pressing its existence into the consciousness of the mind that watches it. If our small minds, for come convenience, divide this glass of wine, this universe into parts - physics, biology, geology, astronomy, psychology, and so on - remember that Nature does not know it! So let us put it all back together, not forgetting ultimately what it is for. Let us give us one more final pleasure: drink it and forget it all!

~~~~

In hindsight, and with due to respect to Anon One's comment, this makes sense too.

Poets said Science takes away from the beauty of stars - mere globs of gas atoms. Nothing is "mere". I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one-million-year-old-light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part - perhaps my stuff was belched from some forgotten star, as one is belching there. Or see them with the greater eye of Palomar, rushing all apart from some common starting point when they were perhaps all together. What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. Far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined! Why do poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if here were like man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia, must be silent?

Surely he must've been joking? Mr. Feynman?

The Death of Vishnu

Vishnu, an odd job man in an apartment complex in Bombay, lies dying on the first floor staircase landing. Within the space of a few hours, the life in this microcosm of urban Indian society slowly unfurls around his impending death. So while Vishnu experiences an out of body phenomenon in which he confronts the possibility that he has become a god, the God, Vishnu, the other residents of the building go about their lives in a mindless fashion, bickering, hallucinating, ruminating, eloping. While he swims in and out of reality, his experience almost spiritual, thinking in retrospection about his hopes, fantasies, and a kaleidoscopic past, the characters of the other building dwellers come into colour, painting a rich portrait of everyday life in middle class India in Manil Suri’s debut novel, “The Death of Vishnu”.

Suri, in a remarkable fashion, blends in the lives of the people living in the building with the unearthly experiences of a dying man. These vignettes of the social, cultural, and religious melodrama that is a part of everyday existence in India are brought to life through four families inhabiting the building – The first floor Hindu neighbours, Asranis and Pathaks, the Muslim Jalals on the second floor, and the recluse living in the penthouse, Vinod Taneja. The titular character, Vishnu, is a hopeless drunk who lives on the first floor landing and makes his living doing menial tasks for the residents of the dysfunctional building. His imminent death, however, is at the heart of a horde of issues that surface as his life ebbs away.

Mrs. Asrani and Mrs. Pathak seem to be perennially trying to get the better of each other, making each other’s lives miserable, while their spineless spouses just hope to get to the end of the day without being yelled at. Middle class and fiercely competitive, the foremost concern of the belligerent housewives seems to be the fact that the ghee is mysteriously disappearing from its container. Even when they finally do agree to help Vishnu out, it is more out of their suspicion of the Muslims upstairs (and elsewhere) than concern for the wretched fellow. Their superficial concerns seem to be in sharp contrast with the touching retrospection of Vishnu, or even the ruminations of Mr. Taneja.

The Jalals, on the other hand, are involved in their own quite personal battle, none of which is apparent to anyone else but them. Mr. Jalal, having previously declared himself to be an agnostic, is now determined to understand the hysteria surrounding faith. He goes about doing so by first embracing physical suffering and then, when it turns out to be too painful, abstinence – reason enough for him to shun his doting wife in favour of intellectual/spiritual enlightenment. The situation comes to a head when Mr. Jalal declares Vishnu to be Vishnu, The God, and himself to be his prophet, after dreaming about a divine revelation in which Vishnu, the drunkard, features prominently, and assuming it to be a sign.

As if the drama were not enough, Kavita, the Asranis’ daughter, and Salim, son to the Jalals, are a couple of lovesick, impractical teenagers who plan to elope in the dead of the night. They do so, only to realize later how ill conceived their entire romance was. Mr. Taneja, the only endearing soul in the building, is a hollow one at that, having given up on life and most of its trappings sometime after his wife’s sudden death due to cancer. He now silently awaits his own demise, no longer capable of either anger or compassion.

However, the foibles of the human life are only half the book for we are offered a glimpse into Vishnu’s world through flashbacks in the past. It is interesting to note that though the author uses the past tense to narrate the current goings on in the apartment building, he cleverly shifts to the present in order to describe Vishnu’s dying memories. As Vishnu looks back in time and recalls, in almost poetic fashion, his life, several colours and memories splatter themselves across the pages. These interspersed reminiscences – mostly poignant, often heart rending, and sometimes fearfully explicit – impart a dream like quality to Suri’s writing. As Vishnu longs for love from the lusty prostitute Padmini, imagines himself as an avatar of Vishnu in his mother’s stories, looks at Kavita with a fatherly affection that’s mixed with lecherousness, and recounts the tales of his childhood, we realize how every human being has dreams and aspirations, no matter however impoverished or overlooked he might be.

The device of using a Hindu God’s name for his protagonist allows Suri to experiment with creating fairy tale like stories about Vishnu’s past while also building an atmosphere for the socio-cultural crisis in which the plot culminates. Though the author never directly comments on any religious, cultural, or social topic of substance, he draws heavily from these themes. It’s up to the reader to interpret the undercurrents.

Suri’s prose is sensual and replete with powerful imagery. His style is nuanced and his attention to details impeccable. So while Visnu’s lust for Padmini, someone he can’t make fall in love with him, is explicit and insanely passionate, the short anecdote about The Radiowalla’s love for his radio captivates the reader with it’s meticulous attention to minutiae. The characters are sketched to perfection and come alive through the author’s love for the mundane. But the downside is that there are too many of them. The reader is often left with several threads to comprehend. And though he can effortlessly move from one to another because of the surreal nature of the narration, several of these threads remain unresolved. The end result being that the plot lacks a definite closure. It’s left hanging and open. The reader has the freedom to read between the lines. In whichever way he deems fit. While that might not be to the liking of many, it’s perhaps the only way the author could have brought the different storylines to a satisfactory conclusion.

Manil Suri, a successful Indian immigrant in Maryland, has shrewdly targeted his novel at an American audience for “there’s nothing a privileged readership likes more than stories about the ridiculous poor (as long as they’re exotic enough to trigger no unease); their antics and pretensions, their cowardice and inability to tell the truth”. Set almost entirely in a middle class apartment block in Bombay, The Death of Vishnu is an emotional, “old fashioned episodic” novel that teeters on the edge of the metaphysical, all with a touch of Bollywood masala and Victorian romanticism. Although the novel lacks a definite or consistent plot, Suri’s eye for details and exceptional story telling capabilities manage to prevent it from falling flat on its face and give it a certain phantasmagoric quality, something which makes for an interesting read but not an exceptional one.

Reviews
1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/01/28/reviews/010128.28gorrat.html
2. http://www.proxsa.org/resources/ghadar/v5n1/vishnu.htm
3. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2001/feb/04/fiction.reviews

Metallic Eye

Farther than what sees the biggest metallic eye.
From the land of dragons and eternal sunshine...

Came a story about love that had lived forever. They said it was so because in memory, love lives forever.

~~

Almásy: New lovers are nervous and tender, but smash everything. For the heart is an organ of fire.

~~

Their love seemed to reflect all the changes he had undergone. It did not mirror them. But the symphony was a secret that was known to both of them. The fact was evident in his love hate relationship with the empty afternoons that brought his life to a grinding halt, almost without fail. In the unending source of inspiration that it had seemed to become. In more poetic moods, he had made himself believe that it had become a cornerstone in his life – a steady anchor in the ever meandering scheme of things. And now, when his romanticism had finally assumed a new image, he wondered how long he could refuse to don his own mantle. One such empty afternoon had caught him unaware and silently posed a question which he had been avoiding answering.

~~

Almásy: This - what's it called? - this place, I love it - this is mine!

~~

He does that often. Cup his face in his hands and look at the trees lining the road near his house. The view is through a grilled window and the pattern gives a surreal kaleidoscopic quality to the usually featureless trees. The Sun is beating its hammer on the anvil and the fresh leaves of spring are dry and parched already. Vehicles plying on the road leave little dust storms in their wake which settle contentedly on the leaves, depriving them of any bright colours and the least bit of dignity. A little out of touch with reality, he finds resonance in the scene. Life seems to be in a state of dysfunction and its presence tugs at his sleeves.

~~

Almásy: When were you most happy?
Katharine: Now.
Almásy: And when were you least happy?
Katharine: Now.

~~

You sit on your throne of question marks. Why? - Pain and suffering. If one can not share them, one can not love. Happiness is secondary. Overrated.

~~

Almásy: Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again.

~~

Yes, I wish for your kind of people to smile and chuckle. To look at me in that heightened state of existence. So I take off on my flight of fancy once more. I swim in and out of clouds. In and out of reality. With and without patience. All the while being loved and not loving back. I miss heartbeats sometimes. Other times, I just skip them. On a whim. Catching a fancy. I keep all my heartbeats in a tin jar. It lies buried in the ground beneath my window. I will take you there. There are thumbpins on the board in my room. A pin for each heartbeat I missed. Yes, one for each of those missing ones which lie safe in the tin jar. My jar has a ship drawn on it. The wind is puffing up the sails. It is almost ready to take off. Bon voyage! The voyage to unknown lands. In search of treasure and pirates. The ship has therefore a black sail. The mast carries a sinister flag. A skull with two crossed bones underneath it. I will have a ship like that one day. I will be the captain. With a wooden leg and nasty parrot. Just like Captain Finch and Long John Silver. But none of your kind of people are going to be on board this time. You come to say your last good bye’s. I am happy I am casting off. Your kind of people are happy too. To see me happy. Whatever that means. I cast off my anchor and smile that last toothy grin, the gap in my teeth giving it an ominous feel. I don’t look back. Neither do your kind of people. I am off, thus, and despite all the eccentricity, I still remain yours.

~~

Katharine: My darling. How long is the day in the dark? Or a week? The fire is gone, and I'm horribly cold. I really should drag myself outside but then there'd be the sun. I'm afraid I waste the light on the paintings, not writing these words. We die. We die rich with lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we've entered and swum up like rivers. Fears we've hidden in - like this wretched cave. I want all this marked on my body. Where the real countries are. Not boundaries drawn on maps with the names of powerful men. I know you'll come carry me out to the Palace of Winds. That's what I've wanted: to walk in such a place with you. With friends, on an earth without maps. The lamp has gone out and I'm writing in the darkness.

~~

The people come alive and emotions are felt once more, their bite more tangible than ever. The plots, the sub plots, and their umpteen characters are sketched to perfection and it seems you had been lying all along, pretending to forget, so that you could goad me into telling my version of things. You sigh, you smile, you wish, and you yearn. The night seems to dilate in order to accommodate the vividness of your narration, and by then time it ends, I have lived another life in the span of a few hours. You’re exhausted, and parched.

If not for my sake then yours. But this is inevitable now. And since it is, it’s best we did what’s the right thing to do. For both of us. Begin afresh. Don’t feel guilty about anything for you did nothing wrong.

~~

Madox: I have to teach myself not to read too much into everything. It comes from too long having to read so much into hardly anything at all.

~~

Almásy: What do you hate most?
Katharine: A lie. What do you hate most?
Almásy: Ownership. Being owned. When you leave, you should forget me.

~~

I slowly find my path, “So out of place”, I wonder.
And soon it dawns how everything was a Slip of Time.
An asylum from banal reality, in guise of a mistress
Of words. How fitting I should sing of it in rhyme!

Monument of Words

The numerous shelves in the room were like edicts glorifying some unknown tyrant. Each narrated its own tale of horror. Or maybe the stories were not that gruesome after all. His imagination always got the better of him. Baah. Gullible spectators roamed in their midst. They looked, searched, and often found bits and pieces of themselves in those mundane gray columns. Having eluded capture till now by lurking in dark corners, figments of their personalities shied away from discovery. Jump cut.

He craned his neck to look beyond the tinted glass of the windows. The view outside seemed mellow, as if the might of the sun had been subdued by some supernatural force. They sky seemed bluer and his fancy only exaggerated the effect. The lights in the room, reflected in the glass, seemed like orbs of radiance suspended in mid air. One could see the leaves being disturbed by gentle gusts of wind. But none could hear their rustle. The usual cacophony of existence had been muted with striking perfection. The only discernible sound was the continuous scrawl of graphite on paper. People shuffled in and out of the hushed chambers, most of them mystified by the strange ambience. An unassuming loafer caught him staring at the ceiling and he quickly hid his embarrassment in the book in front of him. Montage.

The clock ticked to a stipulated hour. It was time. He gathered his ornaments and looked around, soaking it in. “I’ll be back”, thought he and proceeded to retreat into his shell.

Bhaiyya ka Bakhaan

“He is a desperado. He is slow. He is a poet. He is a thug. Above all, the man from UP is just plain grateful he is not a Bihari,” writes Annie Zaidi. You can read the full post, bakhaan, and chittha here: Hum toh Aise Hain Bhaiyya.