The light drizzle accompanied his steady step to the bus stop. He boarded the usual bus and took his seat by the window. Harper Lee in hand, Lea Michelle in his ears, his own little cocooned world of words and music.
Someone sat next to him.. he never glanced that way, rude as he deemed it to stare someone in the face. As Lea reached crescendo and Scout came running, he felt it.. that queer sort of feeling that someone is watching you. He felt his co-passenger's gaze on him.. a gaze unruffled by the wind, or the rain, or the flurry of people around.
It made him conscious of himself.. he didn't like to be watched. He didn't like to be stared long and hard at, like prey being surveyed by predatory eyes. It made him resort to his nervous habits of adjusting his watch and playing with his hair.
He lost interest in the book, turned further right and stared out of the window. The rain was usually a good distraction, from anything. But he still felt that gaze, felt like it was boring a hole through his back. He was irritated now and vocally demonstrated it with a "tch" and bodily turned himself away.
"Chinna malai - Court" yelled the conductor. He could sense movement, yes, the co-passenger had finally quit staring at him and was getting up. He finally turned to look at the source of his uneasiness. His co-passenger had an interesting contraption in hand. A small metal tube-like thing, that when he got up and stretched, became a walking stick.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Monday, October 11, 2010
Non-Conformist and Neutral, Almost.
Our people have transcended beyond religion; everyone wants peace, they said. I believed that statement, if only for an instant. There were no violent, gory and widespread riots this time around. There was only an eerie,almost discomfit silence and inaction.
Then they started; the murmurs, the diffident voices all around me. Blasphemy, said one group, to question age-old faith. Failure of the legal system, said another, to base a judgement on faith, ignoring hard facts. Another said it was yet another partition, right underneath our noses, we were just too busy to smell the stench of division. Three equal pieces or three times the mess, I wondered. Three different judges with three different opinions, too. Everyone agreed, that it was a populist verdict, arrived at to please each involved party to the maximum practically possible level.
In the midst of all this, the "intellectuals" carried the burden of filtering out 500 years of history on their backs. Popular claim was that there was no proper evidence of a temple having existed there, on the ruins/after destroying which a mosque was built. So was Ram Jhanma Bhoomi a misnomer? A verdict made from a theological aspect and one that ignored the archaeological evidence, one made to appease the faith and long standing belief of millions, said many.
What about a survey carried out by the ASI on the court's orders that found glazed pottery and animal bones? Neither the court, nor many from the field of archaeology seemed to affix much credibility to it. Different sets of experts come up with contradictory reports. So we had a temple, demolished that, built a mosque on its pillars if we were to believe one set of the experts. We could have also had no temple to start with, and end up with a demolished mosque, say some. More excavation might reveal there was a neanderthal settlement there, or that dinosaurs once roamed the area.
I typed every single one of the above lines only with the single aim to let the reader know that I listened to, and read about every side of the story, while not taking any side. I respect every religion of the world for the noble intent it was created with, to help man make the most out of his years on earth, for himself and for others around him; to bring order and decorum, meaning and purpose to the lives of each individual, thus collectively shaping a society towards growth, development and "enlightenment". But the day I realized that today's corrupted versions of religions have transcended the importance of the very humans they were created for and by, I lost my faith and my respect.
I want to cry out and lament at the state of affairs; that over a billion and a half people are at logger-heads over 2.7 acres of land, are spending so much time, energy, resources and emotion over a piece of land. If there indeed was a temple, if it indeed was demolished and its pillars used to construct a mosque, yes, it was a thoughtless act carried out without an ounce of respect to an entire community and its beliefs. And if centuries down the line, people were equally thoughtless and went about to do one more wrong in tearing down a mosque, proving that history repeats itself, does that mean that every one of us should get aboard the same bandwagon?
That is all that it was. A single act of thoughtlessness by someone who misused the power he/they wielded 500 years ago. Why do generations of Muslims and Hindus have to pay the price for that single unkindly act? Why can people not let go of centuries of baggage and look at it as what it is? A piece of disputed land, that has been on dispute for way too long to merit any new attention or more importantly, strife and bloodshed? Is it even worthy of our attention, have we not seen a million times at home and away, how if the proponents of radical religion are given free reign, the ugly monster that nourishes itself at their bosom is incapable of distinguishing religion, race, color, or intent in its widespread path of destruction???
And even if it was just a tip of the iceberg of Islamic Iconoclasm, that allegedly led to the destruction of temples everywhere Muslims ruled in India, does that mean we return the favor now, US who live in a world far removed from then? What about Jain and Buddhist idols that are alleged to have been crudely reshaped to form Hindu idols during the days of the Hindu kings? How are we better as human beings today, if all we need is a little provocation to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors?
We live in a world where we can look at entire sets of people as "hindus", "muslims", "jews" and the many other labels that WE created for ourselves. We are effortlessly able to affix common characteristics to each label, have our own individual ranking system of which label is better. Why is religion so very important to so many of us, when none of us truly follow the ideals set by any of them for us to lead our lives with integrity? Since when did the religion we belong to grow strong enough to wipe out the simple reality that we are over six billion spread all around the world, that stemmed from the same seed??? That irrespective of physical differences, 99% of our DNA is the same, we are almost the same person replicated over 6 billion times. Why do we try so pitifully hard to form groups and identify ourselves as different from everyone else, when we are all the same??
And that is when I decided, I would belong to a group too. Born iyengar, bred iyengar, self-made non-conformist. As Hypathea once said (or rather Rachel Weisz, who played her in the movie Aghora said), why would I choose one evil over another? I will not fall to the depths of calling all religion evil, but it will suffice to say they are irrelevant and impotent, incapable of delivering their positive influence on mankind as a whole. Premature ejaculation, and lots of it. Poor joke, I know.
To be neutral does not mean you do not participate. It means you CHOOSE to not take a stand, for there is none worth taking. Being non-conformist is not pooh-poohing every standard and belief the world around us has, but saying I see the leaks in your armor that you are blind to, and I choose not to wear it.
But I am brought down to earth, every single day. Not long ago, I was having a conversation with someone, well-educated, well-read and most certainly intelligent. A heated argument led him to remark, "Go marry a MUSLIM, then!".
And he said it with so much spite, and uttered the term MUSLIM as if it referred to a non-human entity. I calmly replied, I would most certainly like to, not because they are Muslim, but because I fell in love with them and want to share my life with them.
Another individual once remarked, "What if there comes the day you have to choose to stand for you religion - submit to another power, and die if you refuse to?". My reply did not require any thought. Death is the least of my fears. If someone threatened me with death, he is doing a bad job of threatening me. I would gladly embrace death if the only other options were to stand up for something I did not believe in or respect, or embrace something new out of fear, not belief.
Finally, why have the surname Iyengar, when I do not embrace religion in any form? It is MY UNIQUE IDENTITY amongst 6 and a half billion people, the root that I stem from. It is not a part of my name to understate my religion/sect/sub-sect being superior to others or to identify myself as a fervent follower of that religion/sect/sub-sect's ideologies. Would have been the same, had I been a Khan, Williams, Pillai, Jain, Roy or Namboodiri.
Then they started; the murmurs, the diffident voices all around me. Blasphemy, said one group, to question age-old faith. Failure of the legal system, said another, to base a judgement on faith, ignoring hard facts. Another said it was yet another partition, right underneath our noses, we were just too busy to smell the stench of division. Three equal pieces or three times the mess, I wondered. Three different judges with three different opinions, too. Everyone agreed, that it was a populist verdict, arrived at to please each involved party to the maximum practically possible level.
In the midst of all this, the "intellectuals" carried the burden of filtering out 500 years of history on their backs. Popular claim was that there was no proper evidence of a temple having existed there, on the ruins/after destroying which a mosque was built. So was Ram Jhanma Bhoomi a misnomer? A verdict made from a theological aspect and one that ignored the archaeological evidence, one made to appease the faith and long standing belief of millions, said many.
What about a survey carried out by the ASI on the court's orders that found glazed pottery and animal bones? Neither the court, nor many from the field of archaeology seemed to affix much credibility to it. Different sets of experts come up with contradictory reports. So we had a temple, demolished that, built a mosque on its pillars if we were to believe one set of the experts. We could have also had no temple to start with, and end up with a demolished mosque, say some. More excavation might reveal there was a neanderthal settlement there, or that dinosaurs once roamed the area.
I typed every single one of the above lines only with the single aim to let the reader know that I listened to, and read about every side of the story, while not taking any side. I respect every religion of the world for the noble intent it was created with, to help man make the most out of his years on earth, for himself and for others around him; to bring order and decorum, meaning and purpose to the lives of each individual, thus collectively shaping a society towards growth, development and "enlightenment". But the day I realized that today's corrupted versions of religions have transcended the importance of the very humans they were created for and by, I lost my faith and my respect.
I want to cry out and lament at the state of affairs; that over a billion and a half people are at logger-heads over 2.7 acres of land, are spending so much time, energy, resources and emotion over a piece of land. If there indeed was a temple, if it indeed was demolished and its pillars used to construct a mosque, yes, it was a thoughtless act carried out without an ounce of respect to an entire community and its beliefs. And if centuries down the line, people were equally thoughtless and went about to do one more wrong in tearing down a mosque, proving that history repeats itself, does that mean that every one of us should get aboard the same bandwagon?
That is all that it was. A single act of thoughtlessness by someone who misused the power he/they wielded 500 years ago. Why do generations of Muslims and Hindus have to pay the price for that single unkindly act? Why can people not let go of centuries of baggage and look at it as what it is? A piece of disputed land, that has been on dispute for way too long to merit any new attention or more importantly, strife and bloodshed? Is it even worthy of our attention, have we not seen a million times at home and away, how if the proponents of radical religion are given free reign, the ugly monster that nourishes itself at their bosom is incapable of distinguishing religion, race, color, or intent in its widespread path of destruction???
And even if it was just a tip of the iceberg of Islamic Iconoclasm, that allegedly led to the destruction of temples everywhere Muslims ruled in India, does that mean we return the favor now, US who live in a world far removed from then? What about Jain and Buddhist idols that are alleged to have been crudely reshaped to form Hindu idols during the days of the Hindu kings? How are we better as human beings today, if all we need is a little provocation to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors?
We live in a world where we can look at entire sets of people as "hindus", "muslims", "jews" and the many other labels that WE created for ourselves. We are effortlessly able to affix common characteristics to each label, have our own individual ranking system of which label is better. Why is religion so very important to so many of us, when none of us truly follow the ideals set by any of them for us to lead our lives with integrity? Since when did the religion we belong to grow strong enough to wipe out the simple reality that we are over six billion spread all around the world, that stemmed from the same seed??? That irrespective of physical differences, 99% of our DNA is the same, we are almost the same person replicated over 6 billion times. Why do we try so pitifully hard to form groups and identify ourselves as different from everyone else, when we are all the same??
And that is when I decided, I would belong to a group too. Born iyengar, bred iyengar, self-made non-conformist. As Hypathea once said (or rather Rachel Weisz, who played her in the movie Aghora said), why would I choose one evil over another? I will not fall to the depths of calling all religion evil, but it will suffice to say they are irrelevant and impotent, incapable of delivering their positive influence on mankind as a whole. Premature ejaculation, and lots of it. Poor joke, I know.
To be neutral does not mean you do not participate. It means you CHOOSE to not take a stand, for there is none worth taking. Being non-conformist is not pooh-poohing every standard and belief the world around us has, but saying I see the leaks in your armor that you are blind to, and I choose not to wear it.
But I am brought down to earth, every single day. Not long ago, I was having a conversation with someone, well-educated, well-read and most certainly intelligent. A heated argument led him to remark, "Go marry a MUSLIM, then!".
And he said it with so much spite, and uttered the term MUSLIM as if it referred to a non-human entity. I calmly replied, I would most certainly like to, not because they are Muslim, but because I fell in love with them and want to share my life with them.
Another individual once remarked, "What if there comes the day you have to choose to stand for you religion - submit to another power, and die if you refuse to?". My reply did not require any thought. Death is the least of my fears. If someone threatened me with death, he is doing a bad job of threatening me. I would gladly embrace death if the only other options were to stand up for something I did not believe in or respect, or embrace something new out of fear, not belief.
Finally, why have the surname Iyengar, when I do not embrace religion in any form? It is MY UNIQUE IDENTITY amongst 6 and a half billion people, the root that I stem from. It is not a part of my name to understate my religion/sect/sub-sect being superior to others or to identify myself as a fervent follower of that religion/sect/sub-sect's ideologies. Would have been the same, had I been a Khan, Williams, Pillai, Jain, Roy or Namboodiri.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Her Story.
She put the phone back down on its cradle, softly, almost unwillingly, her cheeks aglow with a sheepish grin. Wil always had that effect on her. Two weeks, two long weeks it had been since she had buried her being in the warmth of Wil’s tight embrace. Wil had gone back to Martha’s Vineyard for their ritual annual family reunion; and she had come back home; A home that felt more alien with each passing semester. Being with Wil had opened up a life she never knew as existent and she wanted to hold on to it with all that she had. She felt like the center of Wil’s universe every single moment Wil was with her and she was growing used to that constant attention spotlight emanating from the love of her life, just for her.
She felt invisible here, unimportant, as if a light bulb had flashed momentarily and been switched off to fall back into nothingness. She hadn’t heard from her dad in a long while; after the divorce, he sometimes remembered to call on birthdays, Christmas and sometimes didn’t. Strangely, she never missed him or acknowledged the lack of a paternal influence. It seemed like nothing had changed. Her brother had chosen to spend his holidays partying with friends in Florida. They seemed to live in parallel universes now. All she managed to get out of him on those infrequent phone calls were a few grunts as a reply to her proprietary queries. He had moved on, too.
And yes, there was her mother. The mother she remembered as being busy working two shifts a day, earning the money their father didn’t bring home; he could hardly hold on to a job for a few weeks. The mother who had given up college for her high-school sweetheart and was so bitter that her heart was so overwhelmed with self-pity and remorse for the dreams that were never to be. The mother who took every opportune moment to emphasize upon every opportunity that they had, and she didn’t.
She didn’t know if her mother saw her spending the holidays at home as a hindrance, (she was dating again) or if she was simply indifferent. “It’s your home, after all, dear. You are welcome to stay here as long as you want. Bring that boyfriend of yours too, Walter or something, right?” And that had been that. If only she knew.
Anyway, she’d hardly seen her mother in these two weeks; she was store manager at Home Depot now, and was out with Josh on almost all evenings. He seemed nice enough, and her mother surely deserved a good turn, after all these years. She’d been more than happy keeping to herself, going on long walks and taking in familiar sights. She couldn’t really think of any friends she could visit. A week left, and then back to college and to the rhythm she would be happy to fall back into.
GaGa blared from her phone disrupting her train of thought. She instinctively reached for it and held it up to her ear; she knew who was calling.”Hey babe, just felt like saying I love you; yeah, I know, just said it like 5 minutes back; but still, I love you more than I did then, my hot mama! Mmmmuah! Gotta go!” And the line went dead.
And she knew it then. This was her moment in her life. This was hers to take, to hold, to nurture, to call her own and have for herself, all her life. Wil was hers to love. And Wilhelmina loved her back, just as much, if not more. If only they knew.
She felt invisible here, unimportant, as if a light bulb had flashed momentarily and been switched off to fall back into nothingness. She hadn’t heard from her dad in a long while; after the divorce, he sometimes remembered to call on birthdays, Christmas and sometimes didn’t. Strangely, she never missed him or acknowledged the lack of a paternal influence. It seemed like nothing had changed. Her brother had chosen to spend his holidays partying with friends in Florida. They seemed to live in parallel universes now. All she managed to get out of him on those infrequent phone calls were a few grunts as a reply to her proprietary queries. He had moved on, too.
And yes, there was her mother. The mother she remembered as being busy working two shifts a day, earning the money their father didn’t bring home; he could hardly hold on to a job for a few weeks. The mother who had given up college for her high-school sweetheart and was so bitter that her heart was so overwhelmed with self-pity and remorse for the dreams that were never to be. The mother who took every opportune moment to emphasize upon every opportunity that they had, and she didn’t.
She didn’t know if her mother saw her spending the holidays at home as a hindrance, (she was dating again) or if she was simply indifferent. “It’s your home, after all, dear. You are welcome to stay here as long as you want. Bring that boyfriend of yours too, Walter or something, right?” And that had been that. If only she knew.
Anyway, she’d hardly seen her mother in these two weeks; she was store manager at Home Depot now, and was out with Josh on almost all evenings. He seemed nice enough, and her mother surely deserved a good turn, after all these years. She’d been more than happy keeping to herself, going on long walks and taking in familiar sights. She couldn’t really think of any friends she could visit. A week left, and then back to college and to the rhythm she would be happy to fall back into.
GaGa blared from her phone disrupting her train of thought. She instinctively reached for it and held it up to her ear; she knew who was calling.”Hey babe, just felt like saying I love you; yeah, I know, just said it like 5 minutes back; but still, I love you more than I did then, my hot mama! Mmmmuah! Gotta go!” And the line went dead.
And she knew it then. This was her moment in her life. This was hers to take, to hold, to nurture, to call her own and have for herself, all her life. Wil was hers to love. And Wilhelmina loved her back, just as much, if not more. If only they knew.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Let's start with food....
So just a few days back I viewed a movie with such superlative ingenuity that it will stand out as a sterling beacon in my long and ongoing association with movies.. While I will cover its greatness in vivid detail in a later post, here it serves to establish a background; A dear friend is days away from flying to a far off land to pursue her dreams; a movie followed by lunch where the farewell-cum-belated-birthday gifts are given and we desperately try to create moments to hold on to and hopefully fill the vacuum that the next few years might create.
So let's deal with the movie later, and delve right into the lunch. After a short brainstorming session, (which eliminated Barbecue Nation on financial grounds, the fact that they serve alcohol notwithstanding) we arrived at a refreshingly conventional option - BR Mathsya.
We were a party of 4, with a clear vegetarian majority; Udipi food served in buffet-fashion made perfect sense. Out of the theater, onto the ubiquitous auto and outside the hotel complex in no time.
Have visited the place a couple of time before, but that was long ago. An eye-catching image of the Mathsya avataram just as you enter; there is some outdoor seating for chats and all that jazz.
A board announces that the buffet is in progress and the price tag - Rs. 255 + taxes. A friendly floor manager ushers us in and seats us at a table. We are not sure how to start; do we have to pay first or start gorging right away? A waiter informs that the soup would arrive and then we were free to hit the buffet tables; payment would be at the end.
The soup at best can be described as a bearable version of Rasam. We were more interested in finishing it and heading to the real stuff, so didn't really gauge the gravity of the ominous sign that the soup presented before us. Oh yeah, we did get a glass of rose-colored Rooh Afza-variant, but no one bothered to finish it.
Off to the tables laden with food!!!! Pick up a plate and pile on the starters; a few types of salads, one with sweet corn, one with soaked broken uluttam paruppu that's a familiar sight in brahmin wedding banana leaves. We move on to the "tiffin" items - puri with a sabzi, something that looked like the mallu puttu and a couple of other accompaniments.
Plates laden, we reach our tables; the salads (they called them kosumaris) were good. The puri predictable, the puttu-clone turned out to be sweet and nasty-tasting! The first round abysmal, we return with hopes of better pickings the second time around.
I have to admit, I have a love affair going on with the most famous of Udupi creations - a well made Bisibela Bath. Yes, well made is the important term here. So, when my eyes sight a big bowl full of this wondrous concoction, one can not blame me for going for that second scoop. The rice did look bigger than usual, but really, if you expect a Udupi restaurant to get one thing right, it should be Bisi!!
I did pick up a couple of other items of lesser importance, barely holding back the water oozing out of my mouth; this was the defining moment - one that could tip the scales back in favor of BRM! And what a humongous disappointment it was. Without any hint of exaggeration, it was the worst Bisi Bela Bath I have ever had the unenviable pleasure of consuming. Dry, thick and tasteless with fat strips of over sized rice. I could have forgiven everything else, but this sealed BRM's fate. I would not be coming back for the buffet, ever again.
OK. This would be a one-sided account if I did not mention this. I have been to BRM before and had the Bisi as an a-la-carte dish and it was nothing but splendid - the right consistency, piping hot, oozing ghee and utterly delicious. But that does not mean that when you bundle it as a part of a buffet meal, you can bring down quality, not one, not two, but a hundred notches making one wonder if this indeed was the place where he tasted that uberlicious BBB.
All was not lost though. The dessert section was most certainly the highlight of the meal. Unlimited vanilla icecream (3 scoops only for yours truly), a truly delicious payasam, the expected fruit salad and sweets like mysore pak. The only letdown was the weird tasting sweet appam. You could also get mangalore chat made "live" to add a bit of a breather between the predominantly sweet stuff on your plate.
The bill for 4 went a little above a thousand bucks. Considering the fact that the friend who was flying away actually had to cover her plate with another to hide the huge amount of food she had shunned as unpalatable, (with the rest of us managing to eat the small portions we took of most of the food, and leaving the terrible ones untouched), we felt that we overpaid and under-ate.
Verdict: BRM - strictly for its a-la-carte menu. Feeling buffet-ish, please head in the opposite direction!
And that's the end of my first post! :D
So let's deal with the movie later, and delve right into the lunch. After a short brainstorming session, (which eliminated Barbecue Nation on financial grounds, the fact that they serve alcohol notwithstanding) we arrived at a refreshingly conventional option - BR Mathsya.
We were a party of 4, with a clear vegetarian majority; Udipi food served in buffet-fashion made perfect sense. Out of the theater, onto the ubiquitous auto and outside the hotel complex in no time.
Have visited the place a couple of time before, but that was long ago. An eye-catching image of the Mathsya avataram just as you enter; there is some outdoor seating for chats and all that jazz.
A board announces that the buffet is in progress and the price tag - Rs. 255 + taxes. A friendly floor manager ushers us in and seats us at a table. We are not sure how to start; do we have to pay first or start gorging right away? A waiter informs that the soup would arrive and then we were free to hit the buffet tables; payment would be at the end.
The soup at best can be described as a bearable version of Rasam. We were more interested in finishing it and heading to the real stuff, so didn't really gauge the gravity of the ominous sign that the soup presented before us. Oh yeah, we did get a glass of rose-colored Rooh Afza-variant, but no one bothered to finish it.
Off to the tables laden with food!!!! Pick up a plate and pile on the starters; a few types of salads, one with sweet corn, one with soaked broken uluttam paruppu that's a familiar sight in brahmin wedding banana leaves. We move on to the "tiffin" items - puri with a sabzi, something that looked like the mallu puttu and a couple of other accompaniments.
Plates laden, we reach our tables; the salads (they called them kosumaris) were good. The puri predictable, the puttu-clone turned out to be sweet and nasty-tasting! The first round abysmal, we return with hopes of better pickings the second time around.
I have to admit, I have a love affair going on with the most famous of Udupi creations - a well made Bisibela Bath. Yes, well made is the important term here. So, when my eyes sight a big bowl full of this wondrous concoction, one can not blame me for going for that second scoop. The rice did look bigger than usual, but really, if you expect a Udupi restaurant to get one thing right, it should be Bisi!!
I did pick up a couple of other items of lesser importance, barely holding back the water oozing out of my mouth; this was the defining moment - one that could tip the scales back in favor of BRM! And what a humongous disappointment it was. Without any hint of exaggeration, it was the worst Bisi Bela Bath I have ever had the unenviable pleasure of consuming. Dry, thick and tasteless with fat strips of over sized rice. I could have forgiven everything else, but this sealed BRM's fate. I would not be coming back for the buffet, ever again.
OK. This would be a one-sided account if I did not mention this. I have been to BRM before and had the Bisi as an a-la-carte dish and it was nothing but splendid - the right consistency, piping hot, oozing ghee and utterly delicious. But that does not mean that when you bundle it as a part of a buffet meal, you can bring down quality, not one, not two, but a hundred notches making one wonder if this indeed was the place where he tasted that uberlicious BBB.
All was not lost though. The dessert section was most certainly the highlight of the meal. Unlimited vanilla icecream (3 scoops only for yours truly), a truly delicious payasam, the expected fruit salad and sweets like mysore pak. The only letdown was the weird tasting sweet appam. You could also get mangalore chat made "live" to add a bit of a breather between the predominantly sweet stuff on your plate.
The bill for 4 went a little above a thousand bucks. Considering the fact that the friend who was flying away actually had to cover her plate with another to hide the huge amount of food she had shunned as unpalatable, (with the rest of us managing to eat the small portions we took of most of the food, and leaving the terrible ones untouched), we felt that we overpaid and under-ate.
Verdict: BRM - strictly for its a-la-carte menu. Feeling buffet-ish, please head in the opposite direction!
And that's the end of my first post! :D
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