Blogging in the Time of Commentators

Of late, I've been trying not to contribute to my comment box, the reason being I do not want to push up the number of comments with 'Thank yous.' I have seen posts that have, say, 20 comments; and when you open the comment box, you find that 10 of them belong to the writer who is expressing gratitude to each commentator individually. Therefore, the '20 comments' figure is not only misleading but also meaningless. In any case, a heart-felt 'thank you' is supposed to be felt, not spelt out. Every sensible commentator will know that his or her comment has been read with a deep sense of gratitude.

Still, I felt compelled to reply to an 'anonymous' comment on my previous post, but I decided to stick to my resolution. Then I realised there's a more effective way of replying -- by writing a post. The commentator, obviously a very well-meaning one, said:

If only i was an editor ... i wld ve removed the first three paras from this art coz they are unnecessary and have been written just to attract the attention of the readers, according to me!!

Just to attract the attention of the readers! Now, isn't that we all do? We write for readers, and if we fail to attract their attention, we have failed as wordsmiths. Why else do editors insist on 'catchy' headlines and intros? When a story has to be told, it has to have a beginning, middle, and the climax. That is why it takes filmmakers three hours to tell a story that can be told in four lines: Girl meets boy. They fall in love. But there is a villain. The villain gets killed and the girl and the boy get married.

Most Indian movies are based on these four lines, yet people watch all of them and have different opinions about each of them. And that's because of the narrative -- the way each story is told. So it's not a crime to capture the reader's attention: in fact, it's a necessity.

But to be honest -- and do trust my honesty because a glass of sparkling, golden liquid is sitting on the table -- I don't feel obliged to attract the reader's attention when I write a blog. My only obligation is to write in a manner that it can be followed easily by anybody -- even my driver, if he ever were to go online and check out Ganga Mail.

If my posts begin in a certain way, that's because that's the way I am thinking at that moment. Most often, I do not know what the next sentence or paragraph is going to be. One thought usually leads to another, and only when I realise I've made a point I try to wind up. Though there are times when I write a post with the prior knowledge that I am going to make a point. But even then, what is the hurry in making the point. The blogosphere is your own space: you can stroll to a point instead of jumping to it.

Also, there is something called 'Killing two birds with one stone.' There are times you know you have a point to make, but as you go along, you decide to tackle a few other points that have been sitting heavily on your chest. So if you can squeeze in several points in one post without making it sound jerky, what's the harm?

The real harm would have happened if you, the well-meaning but anonymous commentator, happened to be an editor. Thank God you are not one. But I still love you.

Sex and Spiritualism

Sex and spiritualism: they figure in my Blogger and Orkut profiles as two of my passions. For many, the combination might seem like the mixture of oil and water. What to do, mindsets can be made of concrete. A famous editor of a certain newspaper does not approve of articles related to yoga and meditation because he believes they are synonymous with Hinduism and are unscientific and therefore should not find place in his 'secular' paper.

If an editor, who is supposed to be the embodiment of intellect and knowledge, indulges in such discrimination, you can imagine the horror of a lesser mortal when he finds you glorifying sex on one hand and talking about spiritualism on the other. But what the hell, I shall include scotch as well. Believe me, the cocktail of the three S's can make your stay on this planet really worthwhile -- provided you mix the right quantities.

My recipe for happiness would be: connect to your soul early in the morning; do your karma yoga throughout the day; down a couple of scotches in the evening, and then sex at night. The order could be interchanged, as long as you don't do something at the cost of the other.

But then, it is always easier said than done, and that is why we are what we are, and thank God for that. Imagine a world full of perfectionists who followed a time-table: 6 am -- meditation, 8 am -- breakfast, 10 am -- in office, 7 pm -- drinks, 8 pm -- dinner, 10 pm -- fornication.

So back to the cocktail of sex, scotch and spiritualism; and the people who look down up or laugh at it. Sex and alcohol are often seen as natural partners (therefore the cliched phrase, Wine and Women); but alcohol and God, or sex and God? -- that's blasphemy! But read what South India -- The Rough Guide has to say about the Ayappa cult in Kerala:

"One day, when the two male gods, Shiva and Vishnu, were together in the pine forest, Shiva asked to see Vishnu's famed female form Mohini, the divine enchantress. Vishnu refused, having a fair idea of what this could lead to. However, Shiva was undeterred, and used all his powers of persuasion to induce Vishnu to transform. As a result of the inevitable passionate embrace, Vishnu became pregnant, and the baby Ayappa emerged from his thigh.

"Pilgrims, however, are required to remain celibate..." And it goes on to talk about the famous pilgrimage undertaken by thousands every year in South India.

Per se, it is a good idea to resist physical desires for 41 days: it cleanses your mind and body. But why connect this abstinence to a God who himself was born out of a momentary physical desire?

But then, somebody -- certainly not God himself -- must have made the rules at some point, and people are merely following it. Just like elderly people in villages still follow the unwritten rule that even the shadow of a low caste must be avoided at all cost. Only the dark corners of the mind are at work, and such people, all their lives, are consigned to darkness.

A God-loving man is usually happy, but a God-fearing man is necessarily unhappy. A God-loving man gives a fuck: he has his own devices to tide over the vicissitudes of life. A God-fearing man, on the other hand, is chained either by insecurity or greed. If I were God, and if a devotee came to me pleading, "Please ensure that my film is successful. If you do so, I shall tonsure my head," I would ask the devotee to turn around and plant a solid kick on his ass.

But then, I am not God. Though I know what God is like. God is sitting right inside you: all you need to do is connect. If you are a thief, and after the day's theft you sit in an isolated place to ponder whether you are doing the right thing, and then you hear a voice from within that says, "You loser, can't you work to earn a living instead of stealing?", you have found God. You don't need to go to Tirupathi and pray, "God, if you rid me of my habit of stealing, I shall donate Rs 501."

Very often, alcohol brings you closer to God like nothing else. Because when you are a couple of drinks high, you are yourself. And that is when God is likely to make an appearance. God hates it when you fake it. So be yourself, and chances are God will rescue you.

But most people behave like coy brides when it comes to God. My mother, for instance. She has a set of 'puja clothes', which she washes everyday and makes sure no one touches them when they are left out to dry. Every morning, attired in those 'fresh' clothes, she will sit for puja, but not before she has personally washed all the utensils on which God has to be served. God's food usually consists of tiny sugar-balls, and when I ask her: "God is the one who is feeding us, so why do you need to feed him?", the staple answer is: "How can I leave God unfed?" If I argue, she warns me, "Don't fly too high, God can always ground you."

I pity her, and I pity the millions of others, who undertake so much of hardship to please a so-called God. Imagine standing in the queue for hours and hours, just for the sake of a darshan, or a glimpse, of the deity. And in those few moments you get the glimpse, you don't even relish the sight of the deity because your heart is busy pouring out dozens of selfish requests. And even before you finish with your list of requests, the priest rudely asks you to move on to enable the next guy in the queue to have his darshan.

India, in spite of its population, has no dearth of vacant places. Such as the beach or the riverside. Even a small temple where people hardly go. So please go there, sit comfortably, shut your eyes and talk to yourself. You will find God. Doesn't matter if you have had a few drinks -- in fact, that would make you more honest. Doesn't matter if you have just had sex -- that would rid you of the burden of lust.

Sitting alone, completely at peace with yourself -- that, according to me, is true spritualism.

Being A Bengali

Last Monday, three things happened to me that made me ponder on my being a Bengali -- if that at all I can claim to be one, that is.

Many of you must have seen, or heard about, Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Anand, in which the mortality of a cancer patient is immortalised by Rajesh Khanna. Next to Khanna's performance, the most outstanding feature of the film is its music: composer Salil Choudhury was still on a creative high and he gave songs like Kahin door jab din dhal jaye, Maine tere liye hi saat rang ke sapne, and Zindagi kaisi hai paheli.

Kahin door jab din dhal jaye, like most Salil Choudhury's numbers, has a Bengali version. (Some of them have a Malayalam version as well). The Bengali version, Amaye Proshno Kore Neel Dhrubo Taara, has been sung by Hemant Kumar.

Monday morning, while ritually digging into music on the internet, I found a clip in which Salilda speaks at a function and goes on to sing the same song! For the devotee of modern Bengali music, the clip contains the voice of God. I downloaded it without wasting a second (I've attached it in the end).

Then in the evening, I went to my favourite pub. On one of its walls is a rack displaying some coffee-table books, which I never bothered to look at carefully because I never got to sit near that rack. That evening I did, and I noticed, right on top of the pile, a book titled Satyajit Ray at 70. It was basically a compilation of black and white pictures of Ray captured in different moods and a collection of tributes paid to the director by various people associated with or influenced by him, on the occasion of his 70th birthday. (Ray died soon after). I got a call and that's when I realised that I had already finished a bottle of beer and without even speaking a word to my wife, who was silently nursing her cocktail.

The caller was a friend from Calcutta. I said, "Hello, hello", but no response. When I listened carefully, I heard, in the background, Usha Uthup in full flow, singing R.D. Burman's favourite Puja number, Tumi koto je doore. Pancham has used the same tune in Saagar, at the moment when Rishi Kapoor watches Dimple bathe in the sea, and also for a song in an album being produced by Gulshan Kumar. Gulshan Kumar, a former juice-seller, scrapped the album idea but retained that song, Aaja Meri Jaan, for a movie with the same name which starred his brother. S.P. Balasubrahmaniyam, or SPB, has narrated very often how we was nervous to sing Aaja Meri Jaan but Pancham insisted, "You bloody fellow, that is why I called you all the way from Madras."

The friend came on line only after Usha Uthup had finished the song, and asked: "Shunley?" -- did you hear? God bless her! That's what friends are for: to remember you just at the right time.

Sitting now, in front of the computer, and drinking the only brand of whisky that the neghbourhood booze shop had to offer, and relistening to Salilda's voice, I wonder: why was I not born in Kolkata instead of Kanpur?

In Kolkata, I could have had had a glimpse -- at some time or the other -- of either Salil Choudhury, Satyajit Ray or even R.D. Burman when he came to the city to record the Puja songs. That is besides the pleasure of living in the same city whose streets they walked.

Today, in Chennai, I live on the same street as Salilda's erstwhile guitarist and a musical genius in his own right -- the great Illayaraja. I adore Illayaraja's songs, and am proud that I am his neighbour, but still, why not Kolkata?

I also wonder: who am I? A Bengali who has grown up in Uttar Pradesh? Or a UP-wallah whose mother-tongue is Bengali? Or a Bengali-speaking North Indian who now lives in Madras and loves, apart from RD and Kishore, the Tamil songs of the 1980's?

I have no ready answers. All I know is that my roots lie somewhere in Bengal -- and calm lies in tracing them -- may not be in the physical sense, but at least in seeking to know what Bengal Bengalis are all about. It is like Tamilians in the US watching a Rajnikant film, or being more finicky about rituals than Tamil Nadu Tamils.

As a child, I grew up in the Hindi heartland, with Amitabh Bachchan and Rishi Kapoor as my chief idols. And the songs then were invariably the products of just two men: Kishore Kumar and R.D. Burman. Yet, when there would be a powercut, my father would tell stories written by Bengali writers or sing Bengali songs. The songs didn't make much sense then, but then, when you listen to something when you are eight or nine, it remains with you forever.

At the time, my Bengali was hardly any good, in spite of my father's short-lived effort to teach me how to read and write the language. After a point, he must have thought: "How is it going to matter whether he can read or write Bengali. He is going to live in UP, after all." For my mother, my proficiency in my mother-tongue was hardly a matter of concern. She always dreamt of me as an Army officer or an engineer or a doctor, who could be speaking even Swahili. She hated poets and writers: she thought them to be sissies.

She also hated people who drank: only on one occasion did my father taste alcohol. I remember that evening clearly -- it was my seventh birthday. Our neighbours -- a retired Air Force officer and his wife -- had been invited over for dinner, and when they walked in, I noticed the old man hiding a parcel behind him. I was certain it was a gift for me, and even more certain when he beckoned me with his finger, as if about to tell me a secret. But all he told me was: "Ask your mother to send two glasses." Next thing I know is my mother admonishing father for having touched the forbidden liquid, and father sticking a finger into his throat to puke out the only drink he had had. Today, the same woman has a man for a son who is an aspiring writer and an amateur poet and a professional drinker.

Coming back to being a Bengali. Well, Hindi was the language I could speak with maximum ease then. Not even English, even though I could write in English well enough to get good marks. Interaction with fellow Bengalis was hardly of any help: I ran the risk of pronouncing 'roshogolla' as 'rosogolla', unmindful that the 'sh' sound is so sacred to the blue-blooded Bengali. Dropping the 'sh' sound accords you the status of an infidel, and there are many infidels around outside Bengal, especially the progenies of people who had settled decades ago. It was 'shomoy' (time) and not 'somoy'; 'shaanti' (peace) and not 'saanti'.

Kishore Kumar came to my rescue. He is one singer who sings with great clarity, be it in Hindi or Bengali. With his songs, you don't have to wonder: "Er, what did he say just now?" His pronunciation is "sposhto" (very clear), as opposed to "sposto". So I began to purify my Bengali by listening to his Rabindra Sangeet. It is a different matter that Kishore Kumar sang Rabindra Sangeet by following the Devnagiri -- that is Hindi -- script. The beauty of the Devnagiri script is that it can instantly make you sound like a sophisticated Frenchman or a Bengali bhadralok.

And bhadralok I had wanted to be. The knowledge of pure Hindi helped too: most words, especially the difficult ones, are of Sanskrit origin. If you know how to pronounce them in Hindi, uttering or understanding them in Bengali is not difficult at all. Soon, I was more Bong than many other Bongs in Kanpur. My father, meanwhile, was attending Hindi classes in his office: it was part of the Central government's drive to promote the national language.

By the time I reached college, we had begun subscribing to only Hindi newspapers; and when I joined a journalism course, my parents hoped I could find a job with one of the local Hindi papers in case I failed to become an 'English' journalist.

Once in Delhi, I met the blue-blooded Bengalis, including my firend-cum-philosopher-cum-guide called Sanjay (originally named as Sanjoy), who took over from where Kishore Kumar had left me. Wine and women were our common interests, and to pursue those interests under his tutelage, I had to learn to think and talk in pure Bengali. Not that he did not know English, but it would have sounded strange if two Bong men did not speak their mother-tongue.

Courtesy him, I got to know the bad words in Bengali first, and then the songs. Many of the songs, it turned out, were the ones that my father sang during the power cuts. I set about collecting them -- not only to affirm my being a Bengali but also to please my father by taking him down memory lane. Father was pleased no doubt, but certainly not excited: he had already been there and done that and was now reconciled to life without those songs. For me, however, listening to those songs not only certified me as being a true Bengali but also helped me reclaim my childhood.

Today, I am proud to be a Bengali, but more proud that I am a Bengali raised in Uttar Pradesh. I have the best of both worlds. On one hand, I gorge upon the songs composed by Salil Choudhury and sung by Hemant Kumar. On the other, I am able to devour the lyrics of Sahir and Majrooh and Gulzar.

The Bengali connection seems to be helpful in the South too. For a long time I took offence to the fact that I was being compared, in the looks department, to South Indian, especially Malayalam, heroes such as Mohan Lal and Jayaram. More than a compliment, the comparision meant I was as fat as them. Or was it my moustache? Anyway, I discovered it helps to be a Bengali while at the Sivananda Ashram in Kerala a couple of years ago. The resident priest, presuming that I was a Malayali, spoke to me in Malayalam. When I told him I did not understand the language, he asked, in English: "So what's your mother-tongue?" When I said it was Bengali, he replied: "Ah, same thing!"

Amay Proshno Kore....

Dead Boy Walking

I don't like to be incestuous, but then.

This morning I woke up to a front page picture in the Hindu, which showed Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai patting the cheek of a boy. The caption read: Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai talks to Rafiq-Ullah, a 14-year-old Pakistani suicide-bomber, at the presidential palace in Kabul before freeing him.

Below the picture was the story, headlined: "Pardoning a young suicide-bomber."

How can you talk to a suicide-bomber? How can you free a suicide-bomber? How can you pardon a suicide-bomber? A suicide-bomber is beyond your reach: he is already in the so-called paradise after having blown himself up along with many others.

No wonder the copy, filed by the French news agency AFP, carefully avoids the expression. It only says, at various places, "the boy who was sent to carry out a suicide attack."

Many newspapers these days hire foreigners to spruce up their design. Time they hired foreigners to write the headlines and captions as well.

I Am In Love

In the beginning, the personal blog is like a pet dog. You feed it everyday, take it to the vet when required, bathe it and so on. But after a while, I guess, it assumes the status of a street dog: you are not obliged to feed it, but when circumstances permit, you throw a bread or two. You know it will survive.

Something similar is happening to Ganga Mail. Time was when I used to wonder: "When to write?" These days I wonder: "What to write?" Am I running out of ideas? I am not, and I better not, for ideas are my bread and butter. Just that I don't know which of the thoughts to freeze on the blog -- there's so much happening, pleasant and unpleasant.

The unpleasant bits can remain buried in my chest. As for the pleasant part, maybe I am in love. Almost everything about love has been written by poets and lyricists, and there is nothing new for me to write, except to recall the famous song Pyaar humen kis mod pe le aaya from Satte Pe Satta, in which Amitabh Bachchan, in Kishore Kumar's voice, hums:

Jab koi ginta hai raaton to taare
Tab samjho use pyaar ho gaya pyaare:

When someone begins to count the stars at night
You know he (or she) is in love.

Those into Hindi movies must be familiar with the song. Those who haven't, please listen to it: the song was composed a quater century ago but can sound fresh for another century. It is one of the rare songs that vouches, at the same time, for R.D. Burman's genius and Kishore Kumar's versatility. Meanwhile, would you like to know how the song was created? Here's how:

Pyaar Humen Kis Mo...

Pancham

Today, June 27, is the birthday of Rahul Dev Burman, or Pancham. To me, he is not a composer, but a commodity I cannot do without even for a day, such as the soap or toothpase. Only after I've had a bit of him that I find myself ready to face the world. In the evenings, though, he becomes my soda -- to add fizz to my drink and my life.

Something to celebrate his spirit:

Jaye Re Jaye Re.wm...

The Mind

The urge/emotion that Ganga Mail has been trying to articulate in thousands of words, lyricist Yogesh has put it so beautifully in a few lines:

Kai baar yun hi dekha hai
yeh jo man ki seema rekha hai
man todne lagta hai...

Anjaani pyaas ke peechhe
anjaani aas ke peechhe
man daudne lagta hai...

Often I have seen
these limits set for the mind
the mind seeks to break...

Unknown thirst
unknown desires
this mind seeks to chase...

Kai baar yuhin.wma

Ramgarh Revisited

There are two kinds of people who take the road from Bangalore to Mysore. One, whose destination is Mysore or one of the towns that fall in the 120-km stretch. Two, the connoisseurs of Sholay, who treat the road as reverently as the Silk Route, traversing it to relive history. Presently I fall under category no. 2.

I am waiting at the traffic junction at Ramanagaram, a town 40 km from Bangalore. Sholay, the 1975 blockbuster, was shot somewhere here, as testified by the rocky terrain that flanks you as soon as you approach the town. This is also the constituency of H.D. Kumaraswamy, the Karnataka chief minister. But that’s only for record’s sake. For the connoisseur of Sholay, the territory is called Ramgarh and it belongs to Gabbar Singh.

“Sholay ka shooting? Take a U-turn and then left,” the man selling sliced cucumber at the junction gives directions. So there we are, the driver and I, entering a narrow road off the highway, under the gaze of brown hillocks that loom large on the horizon. We snail past a ‘Men’s Beauty Parlour’ and a few timber shops, and then stretches of barren land on one of which stands a signboard: ‘Site for sale’. Then comes a nursing college: young boys and girls trickle out of it in white coats. From their gaze, it is very clear that a passing car is not a frequent sight on that road. Then comes a village, Konkani Doddi, and soon tiny boys with mischievous eyes and with catapults in their hands start running alongside the vehicle. Every adult we ask for directions points further down the road. So we snake through isolated huts, trying to evade roaming goats and hens all the while, and finally climb up a bit when the road terminates in front of a tall iron gate. The arch over it reads: Sri Pattabhirama Devalaya – Rama temple, in short.

Is Ramanagaram – and therefore the fictitious Ramgarh – named after this temple? I have just begun to wonder about that when the driver, looking relieved that he has finally deposited me at some significant-looking destination, asks me how long I will take. Thirty-two years, I want to tell him. But I hear myself saying, “Maybe an hour or so.”

“In which case,” he grins, “can I go and have my tiffin? You know we have been out since eight.”

I tell him he can take his time.

The search for Ramgarh begins with a steep climb. The temple, I soon make out, is right on top of the hillock that I am now climbing. As I pause once in a while to catch my breath, I realise I am the only living creature there apart from the birds and the insects – such is the privacy. No wonder the rocks along the steps bear innumerable graffiti that testify ‘love’ between people with every conceivable Indian name.

I soon realise there is someone lonelier than me: the priest of the Rama temple. Still, he treats me as if I was the 75th visitor since the morning and dutifully pours, on my joined palms, the holy water. He tells me that Sholay was shot around that hill but that he was too young then to remember the shooting of the movie. “Maybe you can ask the elders in Konkani Doddi,” he suggests.

One side of the temple offers a bird’s eye view of a terrain that could have well been Ramgarh. On the other side is a huge boulder, on top of which stands a small Shiva temple, a small dome (even its ceiling is cluttered with love graffiti – God alone knows how) and a water tank. Standing under the dome, I look at the other side of the hill – that too looks like Ramgarh. As I stand there wondering which could be the real Ramgarh, I notice an old man climb up, panting and holding on to his bag and umbrella. He walks into the control room of the water tank, and when he comes out, I ask him if he knows anything about Sholay. “Oh Sholay! I worked for it. I was a carpenter (on the sets).”

Meet Parasuram. He is 66 years old now and looks after the maintenance of the temple. He led me to the edge of the rock and points to the land spread out below: “That’s Sippy Nagar. The Thakur’s house stood there. And that was where they shot the Holi song. And there, do you see those rocks? Behind them we had built the bridge where Amitabh Bachchan dies.”

As a carpenter, Parasuram helped build the water tank from where Dharmendra threatens to commit suicide, and also the wooden posts on which the hands of Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar) are tied up before being chopped off by Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). “At first we put up temporary structures (for the hand-chopping scene) but they kept falling, so (Ramesh) Sippy asked us to build proper wooden pillars. Oh, what a scene that was!”

Other scenes that Parasuram recalls vividly include the one where the shrouds fly off the faces of the slain family members of the Thakur, the Holi song, and the shot where Gabbar orders Basanti (Hema Malini) to dance on broken glass. “Oh, such a fine actor! What a personality he had! The way he said, ‘Naacho!’” Parasuram says of Amjad Khan.

Parasuram reported to Aziz Sheikh, the construction manager, and his most difficult moments happened during the shooting of the Holi song, when he had to keep fixing the roller-coaster featured in the sequence. “Sippy was just not happy with the way it was going. He would keep saying, ‘Cut, cut, cut.’ It took 15 days to picturise that song. How much money must have been spent!”

He surveys the landscape and goes on: “Sippy was a lion-hearted man. By 4 pm everyday they would start counting the money to pay us. Four o’ clock sharp, everyday. And apart from the meals, we would be treated to puris and omlettes and kababs. Along with the sets, he had constructed a (makeshift) temple, church and a mosque for his unit. He had also installed a telephone line to talk to Bombay.” He says Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan were quite friendly with the locals, and so were the “two foreigners” (Sippy had hired stunt directors from London).

According to him, the shooting of Sholay, which was released in 1975, spanned three years. Sippy would shoot for four summer months each year, providing temporary livelihood to people like Parasuram and hundreds of other residents of Ramanagaram. “At least one member from every household in this village worked for the film,” says Elamma who, now in her sixties, sells knick-knacks from a wooden stall in Konkani Doddi. Her brother, for example, had lent his bullock cart for the sets.

But there are people whose lives the shooting altered forever. Such as Kadamma, who doesn’t know her age but is certain that she is past 70. Back then, she was young enough to have a daughter who was old enough to fall in love. And fall in love she did, the daughter, named Shanta, with a man called Shankar who was assigned to drive Dharmendra from and to the Ashoka Hotel in Bangalore every day.

“When I first got to know that my daughter wanted to marry Dharmendra’s driver, I thought it was some kind of a hoax. But Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan came home with the proposal. That was exactly eight days after Amitabh Bachchan’s daughter was born. (Jaya Bhaduri was pregnant during the shooting). I had made food for them but they did not eat. So I gave them tea and sherbet,” says Kadamma. Shanta and Shankar now live in Mumbai, where Shankar runs a taxi business. They even have grandchildren.

Kadamma, meanwhile, continues to be in awe of Hema Malini (she recalls the actress’ looks as “super”) and remembers how during the shooting, rice and sambhar had to be cooked separately for her and her mother (who accompanied her on the sets) because they could not stand non-vegetarian food.

Soon a small crowd gathers and the men complain about the lack of amenities in the village, most of whose residents are daily-wagers in nearby silk factories. “There are some 150 houses here but only one borewell and four taps. There is no proper sanitation. No government official ever comes here,” says Bairaiah, a neighbour of Kadamma. Kadamma, meanwhile, has begun to narrate the story of Sholay. Time for me to leave.

As soon as I get into the car, the boys with catapults arrive. Nothing has changed in Ramanagaram, or Ramgarh, in these thirty years. Each of them could have been a present-day Basanti, trying to aim at raw mangoes the whole afternoon because their mothers or aunts want to make pickles, or just for the fun of it.

By the time we hit the highway, the sun has begun to dip. Thirty-three years ago, Jaya Bhaduri must have been lighting oil lamps very close to the village I had just left, to the background strains of the mouth-organ, possibly played by R D Burman himself.

Happiness

When I spoke to her this morning, she told me:

"If you really want to be happy in life, you have to overcome the fear of mortality and morality."

In Gabbar Singh's Territory

My Friend

This is my friend Palash. Our friendship goes back a decade and it did not recognise the barrier of the Vindhyas.

Ganga Mail At 200

The previous post, I just realised, was my 200th. A reason to celebrate? Maybe yes, because I never realised I could touch the 200-mark, considering the insipiration and effort that goes into writing posts. Maybe no, because as a professional writer, I should have had no problem writing at least one post a day, in which case I could have touched the 500-mark by now!

Blogging is a funny thing -- it is a lot like your morning workout. At times you wonder: what's the point working so hard at keeping fit when disease or death can come knocking any minute, irrespective of how hard you work out. But most of the days you feel happy working out because it makes you feel on top of the world: you know you are doing your bit to keep yourself healthy, while everything else, including death and disease, are a matter of destiny.

There are days when I spend hours writing about a subject -- usually sex or women -- and then at the end of it, wonder: "What am I really getting out of it?" If I had channelised that energy to write guest columns for some magazine, I could have earned Rs 2 a word. But what do I get out of the blog? Not even honest comments, because most honest comments come from 'Anonymous' readers, and their anonymity, notwithstanding the brilliance of the comment, takes away from the credibility. It is like being patted on the back by an invisible hand: you know it is there, but it is still not there.

But on the other hand, Ganga Mail is like my second home -- rather my hideout. That's the place from where I can write about anything under the sun without bothering to censor my thoughts to suit readers' sensibilities. Most often, it is censorship that readers find most offensive and that way, after a year and a half of blogging, I find myself on a pretty strong wicket. Talking of wicket, blogging is also excellent net practice, in case you aspire to reach out to people through your writings. It is only here that you can learn -- or sharpen -- the art of translating your thoughts into writing, and nobody (save a few Anons) is going to laugh at you or take you to task for not having written well enough. "Well enough" today can be "good enough" tomorrow -- that's what consistent blogging can do to your writing.

I started blogging in October 2005, when this laptop was my sole companion. Today the machine is about to breathe its last any moment -- so much I have used and abused it. I have kept it on for days and also for nights -- just to have the faint glow of the screensaver and the songs for company while I slept. I am too scared to sleep alone in the dark. I had read about R.K. Narayan encountering a friendly ghost in his house in (I think) Nungambakkam. And Nungambakkam is not very far from T. Nagar, where I live. Most often, I would write or be awake till the birds began to chirp, for that's when I felt safe enough to sleep.

Today, even though I have company in the form of a wife, I write till late hours because it is a matter of habit. There is no longer the fear of ghosts, but I somehow feel that kindred spirits roam the atmosphere only during the wee hours and that the best way to communicate to them is by writing. Spirits are faceless and formless; and you seek to persuade them into assuming a face or a form by writing something worthwhile. But they give you the slip, and you write on.

So here I am, writing on -- for who, I don't know, but there's someone definitely out there persuading me to. But persuasion makes no sense without passion -- and of many of my passions, music is one. Oh yes, there's sex too -- but I can't link to a pornographic picture to celebrate my 200th post. What I can do is make you listen to a song that I am passionate about and about which I had written an entire post in January 2006. If you listen to it and happen to like it, I could justify the existence of myself as well as of my blog:

Raat Banoon Main.w...

Sanjana

"Get me just Sprite. You drink whatever you want to, drunkard that you are.

"And pick up a packet of chips if you want to. No, not for me, for you. And just before you take the turn you will find a grocery. Will you please pick up some custard powder? Sorry for the trouble...

"Oh, yes, yes, I know you will take all kinds of trouble today. His Excellency is coming with high hopes. Ha! Ha! Ha! Did I tell you that Amit is also coming? He will be here any moment.

"Hey, hello, don't be an ass. I was just kidding. Amit is not in town. Ok, will you just shut up and come?

"Stop this, will you? I love you, I love you... How many women do you say this to? They might fall for it but I won't, ok?

"Oh yeah? I am different? And to how many do you say that to? Hey listen, I don't have time for this rubbish. I need to hang up, I can smell the oil burning.

"Yes, that's my dad. That's my mom and me, and that's my Tippy. She's a pomerian. She's getting blind.

"No, I will get mine. I hate Gold Flake. I smoke only Classic, or I don't smoke. Ok, I'll have a drink with you. A very small one. But please don't drink too much. There's lot of food. The whole morning I was cooking.

"Excuse me! I cooked because you are coming for the first time, not because I love you. Get your head examined, man! And what is this love business? Grow up, man.

"Yes, I like you. Maybe I also admire you. But what's this love shit? You mad or what? Don't get ideas just because I am nice to you.

"There you sulk again. You are impossible, man. Now stop drinking, will you? The alcohol is getting to your head. Ok, you like R.D. Burman, don't you? I think I have some of his songs, let me check. This is your last drink, by the way. You are not getting anymore. Ha! Ha! Ha! What do you mean there is more! I've hidden the bottle. No, no, no, you can't look for it. No, you are not following me. No, you can't search my bedroom. No, please NO.

"These are some R.D. CDs. Back home I have a good collection of his Bengali songs. He would bring out an album every puja. You are not even listening to me. Ok, ok, I will get you your bottle. Drink and die. I will throw away the food.

"Amit is just a friend, yaar. He is not my boyfriend. Please, for heaven's sake, don't talk about that night. That night there was the whole bunch around. We didn't go to the disco alone. And even if we did, what is your problem? Don't tell me you are jealous. Even if you are, I give a damn.

"God, one more drink! What meaningful? We can have a meaningful conversation even while having food. Don't know when you will stop all this. Grow up, man? Don't think I will be after you all your life, telling you not to drink. I really pity your wife, whoever she will be.

"Oh I love this song. Rekha looks so gorgeous in the movie. Isn't it Ghar? And what's his name, yes, Vinod Mehra. How he blows the smoke on her face, and she lovingly takes it. Height of romance! Give me a drag, na.

"No, no, don't shift, just move your legs a bit. Yes! Badly need to stretch, been cooking the whole day. And cooking for someone who is not even bothered to eat! Ah, this is another lovely number, my all-time favourite. Aane wala pal jaane wala hai, ho sake to isme zindagi bitado, pal jo yeh jaane wala hai -- The moment that is going to come is also about to go, so why not live life in this moment since it is about to go. Yes, yes, I know you know the meaning. I was just thinking aloud.

"Making fun of me? I know very well that this moment I am in the arms of a drunkard. You don't have to remind me of that. Can you repeat the song, please? My hand won't reach there.

"Who told you I am crying? Sanjana never cries, do you know that? My eyes are just watery with all the cooking. Hey, I hope the prawn curry does not go bad. It's already, what, eight hours since I made it?

"Remind me to get the CD of Ghar. We will watch it together.

"Give me two minutes, I will just heat up the prawn curry and the daal. No, no, you won't like it cold. Give me just two minutes.

"Take some more rice, Mr Superman. You've worked really hard. You need the calories. Wait, I'll get the custard. It must be frozen by now. God, it is eleven!

"Stop it! Let me brush my teeth. God, aren't you tired of me by now?

"You are like a child when you sleep. You look so cute. Did anyone say that to you before? I kept pushing you off but your hand kept on reaching for me. I was up the whole night watching you. God, I love you so much!"

Chant That Has Captivated Me

Hanumatstrotani.wm...

Fidelity

I am not going to write about sex for a long time now. This I had to write because a question sits heavily on my chest and I need to offload it. The question, necessarily asked by women, usually the married ones, is: "What if the man gets to know his wife is doing the same?"

The reference, as you can see, is to men who have no qualms having an extra-marital fling or a relationship. In other words, men who sleep around. And the question is thrown at me because I strongly believe, as may be evident from many of my posts, that the instinct of getting physical with someone does not recognise the barrier of marriage.

Marriage is an institution, perhaps a sacred one; and we all know how boring institutions are, especially the sacred ones. If you went by marriage as defined by these righteous women, then being married is like sitting obediently in a classroom, staring at the blackboard and nowhere else. But wouldn't you also like to hang out in the college canteen and eye the girls?

The point is, it is impossible not to succumb to outside charm if there is a functional brain in the head. It is very human. Men who claim they 100 percent faithful to their spouses are either lying or haven't had the opportunity or are scared of being caught. And women who claim their men are 100 percent faithful are either lying or ignorant.

Scared of being caught: if that's what prevents men (or women) from straying occasionally, I would still consider it as infidelity, because the mind has already strayed. In fact, fear of being caught is, according to me, the biggest reason for spouses remaining loyal, especially in a society like ours where people are nosy. Another reason is love: if you love your wife, you don't really fool around. But every once in a while, the head and the heart refuse to listen to each other.

How a man finds a way out between his urges and fears -- it is entirely upto him. Discretion helps a lot. But those who have to do it, do it anyways. Now, what if they find that their wives are doing the same? When this question is usually thrown at me, the woman on the other end perhaps thinks that I would be stunned, and that there would be lots of background music, Kyunki saas bhi kabhi bahu thhi-style, and that with my head hanging, I would realise my folly and come to senses.

The answer is simple: if the wife wants to be upto something, she will be. The fidelity of her husband will never be a factor in deciding whether she should succumb to the charms of another man. There might be other factors though -- such as the fear of getting caught, or people talking about her, or simply excess love for the husband. But just because a man is loyal is no guarantee that the wife will return the favour.

In my experience, most women who love the attention of men and like to spend time with them are the ones with sweetest hubands -- men who eat on time, sleep on time, make love dutifully on specified days of the week, and buy gifts for their wives and take them on annual holidays.

Women whose husbands are the opposite, the wild sort, spend most of their time keeping their husbands in check -- they are so occupied keeping other women at bay that they are completely oblivious of other men. Even if the other men were to shower attention on her, she would not indulge them, because she knows how terrible insecurity is, and she does not want to subject her husband to the same. Most often, they are the ones to throw the cliched question: "What if the wife did the same?" The question, perhaps, is born out of insecurity. Those secure enough, meanwhile, have all the fun.

Having said that, let me also add that sex, like death, is beyond analysis. You never know how it happens, when it happens and, where it happens.

Before I finish, a few things I did not know about sex but got to know this evening, thanks to Cosmopolitan magazine. Such as:

-- Men as well as women take 11-12 minutes to get aroused.

-- A woman's libido begins to drop once she is in a secure relationship.

-- Vaginal exposure to semen could help improve your mood.

-- The average length of soft penis is about 3 to 4 inches. The average length of an erect penis is about 5 to 6 inches.

-- Women fantasise more during sex than men.

-- Sex reduces joint pains.

-- Women are more likely to lie about their sex lives.

-- Weight-loss increases the apparent length of the penis. For every 35 pounds lost, you are longer by an inch.

The Wind

For two months now I have been carrying in my wallet a piece of paper on which I had copied out a passage from William Burroughs In Extermination! I don't know why, but I felt captivated by the prose and since I don't borrow books, I copied it to reproduce it here:

Under a dim moon and dim stars I walked down to a clearing over the sea where I made love to a girl some nights before. She could not have known that her romantic middle-aged lover was actually a stranded pederast who had experienced considerable strain in fulfilling his male role. Anything is better than nothing is a very bad approach to sex. I stood there hearing the sound of the sea several hundred feet down at the bottom of a steep slope, feeling the wind on my face and remembering the wind on our bodies, the wind that is life to Puerto de los Santos. Los Vientos de Dios, the winds of God that blow away the mosquitoes and the miasmal mists and the swamp smells. The winds of God that kept the great tarantulas and the poisonous snakes at bay. The natives have a saying: "Wind die. You die. We die."

Women

woman noun an adult female human being.

Is that it? Is that why I am wasting my time for, rather, living my life for -- for adult female human beings? Makes me feel like a caveman, rather a chimp, who can't distinguish one female chimp from the other.

If I could rewrite the dictionary, the entry under woman would read as: "Species that drive the world. The earth might be revolving around the sun, but they make the remaining inhabitants of earth revolve around them."

Men are destined to revolve. The chase for a woman might seem to be a linear path that terminates in a "and they lived happily ever after" scenario. But if you view the chase from a space station, it would consist of never-ending circular motions. The man who has a chatty woman will revolve around the silent one. The man who is blessed with a member of the species that measures 34-28-36 will salivate in circles for the one with 38-32-40. Most often, in this part of the planet, the middle figure is not so relevant. Men who are paired with 5'4" look up to 5'8". Men whose women write poetry run around women who wear mini-skirts and read Cosmoplitan; while men whose women read Cosmopolitan want their paths to collide with women who read poetry.

You know what I mean. No, I don't mean that grass is always greener on the other side, or that men always look for variety. (I don't mean any of them at least in this post). What I mean is that women are the nucleus of this planet: no matter who they are, they always have a bunch of men revolving around them. Even if it is a plain woman who, for the rest of the world, does nothing worthwhile other than cooking at home and fetching water from the village well. She too will have a handful of admirers -- they could range from the village dhobi to the son of the headman.

Everybody loves women. So do I. In fact, if you care to go through the archives of Ganga Mail, it would appear that I love them more than anyone else does. And that's because I say so. But that was not always the case with me. In school, I was known as a shy boy. I distinctly remember that trip: I was in class eleven and, having the cleared the written examination for the National Defence Academy, I was called for the interview and aptitude tests to Varanasi, where I met fellow candidates of various ages. The stay lasted for about five days, and during the evenings, we would go to the town to watch movies or stroll in the streets.

One day outisde the movie hall, some of the older candidates bought cigarettes. I was shocked that they smoked. A bunch of girls passed by. Everybody stared at them. Suddenly, the senior-most in the group, a boy from Assam, caught me looking too. He clapped and pointed at me: "Dekho, dekho, yeh bhi dekh rahaa hai (See, see, even he is looking)!" A dozen pair of eyes turned to me and they all burst out laughing. As if I was not supposed to look.

Actually I was not supposed to. I considered staring at girls the most undignified thing to do. When in class ten, going for tuitions on our bicycles would be the only outing we had, and most of my classmates feasted their eyes on every 13- to 15-year-old girl that was found on the streets. I remember telling them: "What pleasure do you get by staring?" Maybe I did not know then. Or maybe I knew better.

During school and college days, many classmates went to movies just to watch Sridevi and Jaya Prada. "Kya maal hai," they would say. But I would choose my movies depending on the hero. And come on, when you had Amitabh Bachchan in a movie, did it matter if Rekha, Hema Malini or Sridevi was the heroine? And there came a time when the entire nation had lost its heart to Madhuri Dixit. I didn't. I worshipped Jackie Shroff, and had watched many of his movies alone.

That is why, for a very long time, I would find myself trying hard to think of names when posed with the question: "And, who is your favourite actress?" You could have interchanged Hema Malini of Satte Pe Satta with Rekha of Suhaag and nothing would have changed in either of the movies. Zeenat Aman could have been in Amar Akbar Anthony while Parveen Babi could have sang Aap jaisa koi in Qurbaani. The films would have still been hits.

But today, if someone asks the question, I have a ready answer: Tabu. She may not be glamorous like Aishwarya Rai, but she is good-looking and intense (if I were to watch old movies, I would prefer Geeta Bali over Madhubala, even though it is impossible to escape the latter's spell. Geeta Bali, mildly plump and with a naughty expression, was the girl next-door). If I were to be marooned in an island with Aishwarya, I would wonder: "She is gorgeous and all that, but what do I do with her?" With Tabu, there would be no such doubts.

For some reason, I also like Sandhya Mridul. I have seen only one film of hers -- Honeymoon Travels -- and I think she is a thinking man's woman. So sad that her husband in the movie turns out to be a gay. Another woman I fell for was singer Antara Choudhury -- singer Salil Choudhury's daughter. I saw her at a concert in Chennai: she downplays her good looks with grace, and her only ornaments are humility and a smile. Wish God makes more women like her.

That makes me wonder: what's the kind of women I crave for, or revolve around? To be politically correct, considering my marital status, what's the kind of women I would crave for, or revolve around? Here's a short list:

1. Women who are not the obvious object of desire for men. The obvious ones are such a turn off because they know they are being eyed by all and are thus so consumed by vanity that they are good for nothing else -- other than looking at the mirror.

2. The ones who are zaraa hatke -- somewhat different. The ones who can wear Fab India and carry it off with an attitude as if they were wearing Ritu Kumar. But on evenings they really wear Ritu Kumar, they make even the regulars of designerwear look pale.

3. Dusky women. Not that I have anything against women who are fair: just that I don't consider fairness as a synonym for beauty. Dusky women are so appealing. You can call it a quirk.

4. Women who wear glasses. (And who remember who take the glasses off just in time).

5. Women who write well -- or at least take pains to articulate their thoughts in writing and not make excuses like: "Come on, am not a writer like you!" They must remember that in the olden days, handwritten letters, crafted with a lot of effort, were the sole expression of the soul.

6. Women who don't care about their looks. That's when you can get on with business.

Writing And Making Love

From Ernest Hemingway on Writing:

"Eased off on the book . . . in May because Dr. said I worked too hard in April, and May fine month to fish and make love to Miss Mary. I have to ease off on makeing love when writing hard as the two things are run by the same motor."

-- to Charles Scribner, 1948.

Lost Pen

Exactly a year ago, with a great measure of smugness, I wrote a post titled Pens. It glorified the fountain pen and boasted about my collection. Perhaps I went overboard in my boasting, and in the process cast an evil eye on my own collection.

In the 365 days that have passed, I got poorer by six pens. Five of them I lost while shifting to the new house. I was heartbroken, but didn't quite shed tears over them because I still had a pair of Mont Blancs intact. One was gifted by my wife on the wedding day, and another by a friend as a wedding present. They more than made up for the missing pens, even though the missing pens had stood me through thick and thin, tolerating my mood swings and writing all my stories till the laptop came and forced them to a permanent place in the pen-holder.

Today, one of the Mont Blancs went missing too. The one wife had given me: I had even got my initials engraved on that. How it went missing, I do not know, but I know how it all began. Wife was packing up to go to Calcutta -- for a stay that is short enough not to make me feel miserable missing her, but long enough to enable me to relive my bachelor days. After she left I slept for a while and woke up to find dark clouds outside the window. The wind was throwing things off the shelf in the kitchen. Soon I smelt wet mud. I looked at the clock: only 5 pm. I got down and asked the driver to take me to Landmark, the bookshop. Chennai had never been so cool in months.

I bought four CDs and a book, Ernest Hemingway on Writing. Not my kind of book exactly, because I would rather try to write like Hemingway than read his reported views on the art of writing. But it was cheap, only Rs 288, so I bought it. Back home, alone, I sat on my table and switched on the laptop and, while it took its time opening, I browsed through the book. Instinctively, my hand reached for the pen-holder to find a pen and sign my name on the book. That's when I realised something was amiss.

It is not easy to buy another Mont Blanc: the model I had would cost a chunk of my salary. Even if I have the money, could I buy the sentiment that had made my wife gift the pen? But I guess I deserved losing it. Pen is not jewellery which you keep in the safe and take out only to wear on special occasions. The pen is a vehicle of your thoughts, and it is meant to be used. If I had used it regularly, I would have known where I had kept it the night before. But how can I guard it when I am myself a prisoner of the keyboard?

Marriage Versus Myself

I'm back. I better be. A few more weeks of absence and I would have forgotten my Blogger password. And a few months later, I could have found myself telling people: "I also used to have a blog." If that really happens, who should I blame? Myself, or marriage?

Technically, myself. Because I have all the time in the world to think and to write. And my wife does not whine when I sit at the computer. In fact, she wonders what's wrong with me the days I ignore my laptop. The late nights still belong to me, and nothing stops me from pouring a drink and start writing.

But psychologically, I would blame marriage. I might have all the time in the world, and I might have a wife who recognises my need to write, even if it's a blog post, but of what use are they if I don't get the urge to write? When you live alone, you are at constant conversation with yourself. And the conversation shakes your mind like a soda bottle: the contents are bound to spill out, in the form of writing or whatever. But when you have a partner living with you, and when you have a conversation with her, it is like mixing the soda with whisky: you drink, you are high and happy, you have dinner and go to sleep. Tomorrow is another day. Life goes on, and then one day, years later, you look into the mirror to find an entirely different person than you had believed yourself to be.

Moral of the story: soul-searching might lead to happiness, but happiness could be the biggest impediment to soul-searching. And without soul-searching, there would be no creativity. Is that why most creative men are so unhappily married? I am not seeking to generalise, but going merely by instances recorded in history, East or West. Einstein was a compulsive womaniser, and so was Picasso. Our own Khushwant Singh, on the other hand, is a compulsive talker about womanising but has been a faithful husband and has led a happy life – is that why he turns out such bad, albeit readable (because of the gossip), prose?

Tagore had his share of lovers; while Satyajit Ray was madly in love with his favourite actress till his wife confronted him about the affair and he fell at her feet, literally, to apologise. My favourite writer and singer were married four times each – that is Hemingway and Kishore Kumar. Down South, the most creative of actors and directors, Kamal Hassan, has already been married twice and is seen these days in the company of actress Gowthami.

The list of unhappily married celebrity men is very, very long. The latest addition to it is Aamir Khan, whose second marriage, according Stardust, is also said to be in doldrums.

But the list of happily married men is also very long. But it does not consist of celebrities I aspire to be. It comprises mostly of friends and relatives, who fed themselves so much on happiness and contentment that their waistlines swelled and their chins doubled and tripled. And an expanded waistline is the biggest enemy of productivity/creativity.

I once had a friend who studied journalism with me in Kanpur. In fact, I owe my career to him, in the sense that while we were still in college, he had coaxed me into coming to Lucknow to meet the editor of a paper. The editor happened to be out of town the day we went, and I gave up. But the next morning, my friend was again at my door, at 6, asking me to get ready to take the bus to Lucknow. I hurriedly got ready. We finally met the editor. I got the job, he didn’t.

A few months later, he managed to get in too, as a reporter. I envied him, for he was a reporter, while I was deskbound. But his father envied none of us: he sought the ultimate happiness for his son – a government job. So a promising reporter became a clerk in LIC. The new, ‘secure’ job was rapidly followed by marriage and a kid. The last I saw my friend, even though he lives in the neighbourhood, was 10 years ago: happiness and contentment radiated through his potbelly. He had no desire left in life: he had reached his destination. I was happy for him.

But the problem with creative men is that they have no fixed destination: they are vagabonds whose happiness lies in unhappiness, and who go wherever life takes them. They can never plan things like, “Ok, for five years I will work in this place, and then I will take a transfer back to my hometown, where I shall live happily ever after.”

That’s because a plan means topping one-fourth of a glass of whisky with soda. Whereas creativity means holding just the whisky: you have no idea what you are going to mix it with – it could be tap water or soda or Sprite, depending on the circumstances.

And life, post marriage, becomes a plan. You no longer listen to your heart, but only your head. And that’s when it shows on the waistline. If I were to listen to my head, I would have stopped blogging. The head would have reasoned: what do I get out of blogging, except for getting 25 readers? Isn’t it such as waste of time, when you could spend that time doing something constructive? But there is a heart that reasons: isn’t it great that you are able to reach out to 25 people, who share your thought process? What can be more constructive than that?

I would rather listen to the heart. Listening to the head would mean forgoing the little pleasures that life has to offer.

What, then, happens to creative women? Are they also faced with the same dilemma as men? Of course, they are, only that their sentiments rarely matter. Even today, even in cities, where women are supposed to be on par with men, it is the wife who settles for whatever job comes her way each time the husband gets a transfer or wants a transfer to a new place. Marriage itself is usually a transfer for her – to a place she night not want to be in. But then she opts for the transfer sportingly because she knows that’s how it is supposed to be.

Not only that, a woman also has to pretend to be happy in marriage, even though happiness, as I just said, could be an impediment to creativity. A man can nourish his creativity by proclaiming his supposed unhappiness to other women, who provide him the zing that he is looking for; but a woman can’t make such proclamations, for the simple reason that she will be seen as loose or horny. So they suffer.

In other words, it is so much easier for a man to balance marriage and ‘myself’, provided he has the brains. But a woman gladly settles for ‘us’ rather than ‘myself’. For example, here I am, cribbing about not being able to blog regularly because of marriage, but how often do I pause to think of the things that my wife is not able to do after her marriage to me?

Garden of Auden

My life is largely sustained by the belief that I shall create literature someday; and this belief, I believe, largely stems from the fact that I never studied English literature. Inferiority complex, you see. Shakespeare is completely lost on me, so is Eliot. I find it impossible to wade through Charles Dickens or Thomas Hardy, and I had never heard of W.H. Auden till about eight years ago when a Time magazine article explained his greatness.

The same Time issue toasted James Joyce as the greatest writer or the 20th century, and that's when I bought Dubliners, a book of his short stories. But trust me, I shall never buy Ulysses no matter how rich I feel. I would rather have people write a thesis on Ganga Mail 50 years from now than spend 50 days trying to read a book that literature students are still dissecting to earn their doctorates.

But a few years ago, from the Crossword in Delhi's South Extension, I did buy a slim collection of Auden: Rs 357 for a book that barely ran into 50 pages. I bought it because I felt drawn towards the picture of Auden Time had carried in the issue I mentioned (I did not know then that he was a homesexual): a man with a wrinkled and rugged face holding a cigarette. I had wanted to look like that when I was much older. Anyway, I went through his poems and was very impressed -- doesn't matter if I don't remember any of them.

Auden caught my attention once again last month, when the London Times, to mark his centenary year, republished his views on writing. An extract:

"A girl whose boyfriend starts writing her love poems should be on her guard. Perhaps he really does love her, but one thing is certain: while he was writing his poems he was not thinking of her but of his own feelings of her and that is suspicious."

But isn't that how the world is? We hope and pray that our parents and siblings and spouses are fit and healthy, not just because we want them to be fit and healthy, but mainly because we worry about the agony we will go through if they are not. It's a selfish world. The girl should be grateful that the boyfriend has at least a feel for her. His feeling is the measurement of love. If he is completely consumed by her, there would be no feeling. There would be no poetry. There would be no Auden. There would be no literature.

Perhaps that's what Auden also meant, and perhaps that is why I so admire him, even though I have hardly read him. But what I admire about him most is his punctuality. As he said of himself, as quoted by London's Spectator:

So obsessive a ritualist

a pleasant surprise

makes him cross.

Without a watch

he would never know when

to feel hungry or horny.

It would really help if I could schedule things like horniness.

In God's Own Country

My Five Favourite Bloggers

Gaurav has listed me among his five favourite desi bloggers -- a great honour indeed, considering that Technorati doesn't rank me even in the first 100,000 (at one point, though, my position was 49,562). But he has also tagged me, which means I have to list my five most favourite bloggers.

Now that's a difficult task, considering I barely spend time on my own blog these days, leave alone read others. But I do read, once in a while, something here and something there. Mostly I stick to reading people I know: getting to know them better is any day more worthwhile than trying to peep into the mind of a stranger. Occasionally, however, a stranger does grab your attention, but soon the stranger joins the list of people you know. So you are back to reading the people you know.

But there are blogs I would never want to read, such as the news and views ones. Perhaps as a professional journalist, I don't feel compelled to read a blogger's take on news and events. I don't know if such blogger's are popular because they are prolific, or because they are prolific that they are popular; but what I know is that it is easy to be prolific when you sit in front of the computer, every morning, with the day's papers and start nitpicking or sermonising. It is also easy to be prolific when you write Guess-what-happened-to-me-last-night kind of stuff.

It is, however, not easy to record the impact that the simplest of things make on your mind. For that, you need to have a mind that is sensitive. And blogs that show such sensitivity turn me on. During my year-and-a-half of blogging, I have come across many such blogs. The owners of some of them escape my memory, while the rest figure on my friend's list. Atul Sabnis, Reshma, Arundhati, Prerona, Paresh, Deepa... I read them whenever I can. Shankari's verse makes me jealous. Then there is Kornershopgirl, who was born to be a writer but became an obgyn. And the others. It would be unfair if I chose my favourite five from among them, because they are 'friends' and equally dear to me. I could, however, choose from among the people who don't figure in my list but whose blogs I relish:

1. Gauravonomics. That's Gaurav's blog. No, I am not really returning him the favour, even though such a gesture is naturally in order. If you read him, you'll know why he is a favourite. He writes about the same emotions as I, albeit with greater elegance and flair. Reading him gives me a feel as if we were two friends in a previous birth, working in a small town in a very boring office and who, whenever they went to the city on assignments, would indulge in sins with a gusto -- from drinking in roadside dhabas to whore-hunting in seedy streets. What do you call that: deja vu?

2. Maanga. That's Nilu's blog. His is the only blog whose comment box is as interesting as the post itself. Reason being he blogs with a pin, which he pokes at the bottom of everyone who reads him -- and everyone means everyone. There are people who love him, and who love to hate him, while I watch the fun sitting on the fence. When he is not puking on others, he is writing about economics and erotica. He excels in writing the latter, trust me.

3. Starryeyedwanderer. She is someone I do not know, but I wish I did. I am partial to anyone clining to their twenties, because that was my principal occupation a few years ago. Now I cling to the 30's. Anyway, the sensitivity she displays is as if she has been around for many more decades, and how she articulates that!: Raindrops glitter on my window pane. Like diamonds. And I wonder who's crying this time. Another post moans the lack of 'smart men', and men who consider themselves smart should read that, though let me warn you: she is smarter.

4. Wickedly Yours. That's Anna's blog. I have known Anna for a short while, professionally, and I know she is a bright kid. Her posts, obviously, are not written in a deliberate style for people to read and appreciate: and that is what I like. They are more of a raw diary, recording to angst of someone who has just stepped out of her teens.

5. Compulsive Confessor. I happened to read her because her URL has been forwarded to me, time to time, by various people. Perhaps because the stuff she writes is bound to tickle the Indian male reader, myself included now. But that does not take away from the robustness of her prose. She is very, very good. Makes you think -- if you want to think, that is.

Gaurav, you owe me a drink now.

Confessions Of A 'Novelist'

Ten years ago, inspired by Upamanyu Chatterjee’s English, August, I began writing a novel – my first. The character, obviously, was based on me – not loosely, but fully. I named him Shankar. The story begins with Shankar, who has just shifted to a new house, waking up to the sound of the alarm clock. He gropes for the clock in the early-morning darkness and only then it hits him that he is in a new place.

The opening scene ran up to about 1000 words or so. I rewrote it about a dozen times, and showed it to friends, who were all very polite in their feedback. A couple of them who wanted to appear well meaning suggested a few changes. I carried them out. What next?

I was clueless. It is easy to wake up a sleeping person, but once the person is up, the real story begins. Ok, I had a rough story in mind. But how to go about it? I began to look for inspiration. I bought John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel, which was the byproduct of his writing of East of Eden. On the margin of every page of East of Eden’s manuscript, he wrote a letter to his publisher Pascal Covici about the progress of his day’s work. The exercise helped him clear writer’s block as he went along. So I too drew vertical lines on the pages of my diary: on the left were letters written to myself, and on the right the story of Shankar. Subsequently I also bought the voluminous East of Eden. But soon after I read an article in the London Times which quoted some famous writer – I can’t recall the name – as calling Steinbeck a “third-rate novelist with tenth-rate philosophy”. I junked the two books. Shankar’s future continued to hang in balance.

I turned to Hemingway for inspiration. A Moveable Feast begins with his account of a café in Paris, where he sitting and working on Up in Michigan, which was celebrated as one of his most famous short stories. His words: “… in the story the boys were drinking and this made me thirsty and I ordered a rum St James. This tasted wonderful on the cold day and I kept on writing…” While he is still writing, a pretty woman walks in to sit on a nearby table. About her: “I’ve seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for… You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me and I belong to this notebook and pencil.”

I spent many afternoons in the Delhi Press Club, drinking rum while others drank vodka with plenty of ice. No one disturbed me, because no one had ever seen anyone so engrossed in a place where you are supposed to drink and laugh and discuss the state of the nation. I wrote a lot about Shankar’s childhood, as in my childhood; but there was nothing concrete to take the story forward from the point Shankar had been woken up by the alarm clock. The story had a strong past and a strong future, but no present. The present was sitting and drinking in the Press Club.

I decided to turn to Graham Greene. The protagonist of his The End of an Affair, Maurice Bendrix, was a disciplined lot: “Over twenty years I have probably averaged five hundred words a day for five days a week… When I was young not even a love affair would alter my schedule. A love affair had to begin after lunch, and however late I might be in getting to bed – so long as I slept in my own bed – I would read the morning’s work over and sleep on it.”

But those days, love affairs mattered a lot for me while the bed didn’t. As a result, my alter ago could never get out of his bed. Ten years have passed, and now it hardly matters. But I do look for a place to hide whenever a friend from those days asks: “Has your Shankar woken up yet?”

Love

As kids when we learn grammar, and when the English teacher tries to explain abstract noun, the first example that he or she usually hands out is 'love'. Something that is there, but still not there. You can't touch it or see it, but you live it, live on it and, even, live off it: Sahir and Majrooh and Gulzar would have remained anonymous if not for love.

But the question that torments me is: how honest is love? Wish there was a loveometre to measure the honesty and intensity of the emotion when someone said "I love you".

I have said "I love you" hundreds of times because that seemed to be the most appropriate thing to say. Either as habit or as part of natural progression of a long-drawn conversation (running into days or weeks) with a woman. Not saying that would have made the situation awkward. After all, only in paid sex can you dispense with those three words.

I have said "I love you" dozens of times because I really felt like saying it -- sex or no sex. There are people you grow with and suddenly, one fine morning, you realise they have become part of your habit. In effect a part of you. If what you feel for them can be called love, then the declaration has 80 percent honesty. Not 100 percent, because there are likely to be other people you love the same way.

I have said "I love you" to my girlfriends because that's the done thing. Not saying those words at appropriate moments would have meant serious trouble. That holds true for my saying "I love you" to my wife. Now wait a moment. I really, really love my wife, and I am not saying this to save my ass in case she reads this. And she loves me too.

I have, however, never felt "I love you" gushing up my chest. It happens quite effortlessly in movies, but in real life, I guess it would take a great deal of effort to be in a situation where you could feel love throbbing like your heart. Such as taking the plane to Brazil. Suddenly the plane hits a tree and you find yourself thrown out into the Amazon forests. In the forest you spend months among animals and tribals whose language you obviously don't follow. And then one day, a man walks into the hut you are living in. He looks just like you and he speaks Hindi! What is the emotion that will overcome you? If you can describe that emotion, then you will know what it means to say "I love you" with 100 percent honesty.