Days

Today and now, has arrived the evening of a much tired day.
The streets, they lie emptied of their ordinary people and I’m
Vaguely conscious of a dull ache in their lifeless hearts. They
Have shed silent tears at being neglected in a way so callous;
I simply see straight ahead, nodding, as if in silent agreement,
Counting my steps so that I need not meet their empty eyes.
The food tastes blander than usual; its revolting mediocrity
Finally smothering my appetite. But I swallow still and allow
The lack of taste to engage in a strange duel with my instincts,
While I wonder naively when the conflict shall reach an end.
The faces in the shops are familiar yet distant, engaging me
In pointless conversations. But I humour them anyway for
These days loneliness so often stumps me in my solitude,
Making me think of you. You who hold command over the
Absurd swings in my mood. You who so often rob me of
My peace of mind and leave me breathless for falling in love
Too soon. It is hard to find if you know this but there is a
Way between hearts that knows that it was never too much
Or never too soon. All it takes is a languid passing afternoon
And things drift away like our endless but numbered days.

Ardh Satya

The following poem, by the Marathi poet Dilip Chitre, is a bit abstruse to start with. I say abstruse because different people may interpret it differently. Someone might take it to be a commentary on the existential crisis that stems out of failure to act justly. While someone else might find it to be a fitting description of a romantic’s predicament on coming face to face with the ‘real’ world. You, on the other hand, might come up with a totally different interpretation.

Ardha Satya, a film by Govind Nihalani, has Om Puri reciting it in one of its scenes and gradually becoming aware, during the course of the same recital, the stark similarities between his own moral dilemma and the one the poet is talking about. As the meaning sinks in, he continues reading, but in a much more subdued and sombre tone. He knows the ‘Chakravyuh’ has caught up with him as well and either he must find a way through or subject himself to the moral backlash that will result if he chooses to become a part of it. There is no changing the maze itself. In a way, the poem encompasses the gist of the movie - moral impotency and the loss of self-respect as a person finds himself slowly, and involuntarily, becoming a part of a system he could never relate to in the first place. The loss seems to have amplified when he meets a woman who has much more courage than him.

The part I like best about the poem is its acceptance of the fact that there may not be any Absolute Truth. Just Ardh Satya or the Half-Truth. So, when the moment of reckoning comes, what do we choose? I guess, then, the ‘What’ is not as important as the courage to be held accountable for it. To have the strength to live with your choices and ideals. After all, in the light, the light of choices, will everything be equal? The 'right' choice - it might offer you a way out of guilt. But will it be any less painful or difficult? On the other hand, you might be able to tread the seemingly easier path. But will the guilty conscience be able to subsist on self pity and ignorance? There is no easy way out or in. When faced with an existential choice of such magnitude, in life, love, or beyond, Man is essentially alone, and there is nothing that ‘The Other’ can do alleviate his anguish or lessen his burden. His actions warrant responsibility and the strength to stand by them.

The movie concludes suggesting that Om Puri finally decides to break out of his situation, and regain his manliness and self-efficacy. But at what cost and in what manner? Ardh Satya indeed. Here’s a rough English translation of the poem I found online. However, I would recommend watching the movie you need to feel the real intensity of the poem.

Ardh Satya by Dilip Chitre

Chakravyuh mein ghusne se pehle, kaun tha mein aur kaisa tha, yeh mujhe yaad hi na rahega. Chakravyuh mein ghusne ke baad, mere aur chakravyuh ke beech, sirf ek jaanleva nikat’ta thi, iska mujhe pata hi na chalega. Chakravyuh se nikalne ke baad, main mukt ho jaoon bhale hi, phir bhi chakravyuh ki rachna mein farq hi na padega. Marun ya maarun, maara jaoon ya jaan se maardun. iska faisla kabhi na ho paayega. Soya hua aadmi jab neend se uthkar chalna shuru karta hai, tab sapnon ka sansar use, dobara dikh hi na paayega. Us roshni mein jo nirnay ki roshni hai sab kuchh samaan hoga kya? Ek palde mein napunsakta, ek palde mein paurush, aur theek taraazu ke kaante par Ardh Satya.

Who was I, before I entered this maze, Is not something that I will remember. As I entered the war-maze, There was only the life-threatening Closeness between the enemy and me. Even this, I will not realize. After getting out of the maze Even if I earn my freedom, The maze by itself, will not change. Unaltered. To die or to kill, To be killed, or to take someone’s life, Even this will not be decided. As a man wakes from his sleep, And starts to walk, he can never Again, see the world of his dreams. In this light, the light of choices, Will all be equal? Impotence on one side, Manhood on the other, And in the centre, (tipping the scale) is the Half-Truth.

Everybody Lies

X: I do not lie. Not that it should matter to you. You obviously seem to know the truth.
Y: Everybody lies.

X: How come?
Y: White Lies? Your thing?

X: White?
Y: Lies which we tell to make other people feel better.

X: Huh?
Y: No? What about rationalizations? Those are lies which we tell to make ourselves feel better.

X: I think I am gonna go.
Y: Hmm, not even that? Lies of Omission? So are you going to tell me? What's your favourite way to have sex?

X: WHAT?
Y: See, now that is an evasion. You need to stick to the stereotypes. What use is my lecturing if it's not even helping you see the light? So, what is it? Saddle, bronc, or doggie?

X: I think I'd be better off sticking to a lie.
Y: I told you. It's like the great Dr. House said, "Lies are like children. They're hard work. But they are worth it, because the future depends on them."

*Smug Smile*. Anyone?

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