She

"There are two mes. The one that you see, the other you talk to. Who do you prefer?"

Can't I have both?

"No, you have to choose one." She grinned mischievously.

The one that is asking me to make the choice -- is she the one I see or the one I talk to?

"You decide that." She grinned mischievously.

One has the flesh, the other has the thoughts. I like the flesh, therefore I like the thoughts -- or is it the thoughts that make the flesh so endearing?

"Go on, go on. I am listening." She grinned mischievously.

I think it is the thoughts that work for me. Without the thoughts, what good is the flesh? A body in the mortuary? A mannequin in the shop?

"You are smart." She grinned mischievously.

Chai, Chai Chugs On

I am sure there are times when a writer, unless he has reached a stage when each word that comes off his laptop or typewriter is worth a hundred dollars, ponders over this question: Which is better -- a review that trashes your book, or no review at all? One is the fire, the other is the frying pan -- the choice is yours. I, however, believe that you should just blindfold yourself and take a long leap, without worrying about where you are going to land, the frying pan or the fire, and chances are that you might just find yourself on a bed or roses. In other words, just write, as honestly as you can, without worrying about the outcome.

One can write a full-length self-help book on this subject -- "100 ways to tide over criticism" or "50 things you can learn from bad reviews" -- but the truth is we are human, and criticism hurts, especially after you have invested two or three years of your precious life producing a book which would be the first thing you would run to save if there was a fire. Writing a bad review, even if it is justified, is like telling the mother of a newborn, "Oh, but how could you produce such an ugly child!" There are ways of conveying unpleasant things. In any case, what appears to be unpleasant to one could be the opposite for another.

I have always been disinclined to review books even though I worked with a Sunday paper for a very long time. I can count on my fingers the number of reviews I have written: and most of them were of books related to either travel, yoga or Bollywood -- books that interested me immensely and which I finished reading in one sitting. But nobody has ever been able to hold a gun to my head and say, "We are falling short by one review. Here's a new book, why don't you review it? So, 500 words, by 3 o' clock tomorrow?" You can't write a review like that: three years of labour judged in three hours or less, and the verdict written in 30 minutes!

That's precisely why I admire my friend Baradwaj Rangan. He is one of the few, if not the only, honest film critics we have today in the entire country. It is rare for him to give his verdict unless he has watched a movie at least twice and has heard a music album for at least two days in a row. It is not for nothing that today he is a celebrity reviewer: people actually look forward to what he has to say about a movie or a music album.

By now you must be wondering about the purpose of this post: has Chai, Chai been getting bad reviews? On the contrary. I must say I have been very lucky in spite of being a first-time writer. The book has not only earned some very good reviews but has also gone into reprint within four weeks of hitting the stands. There have been two unsavoury reviews as well. One of them I choose to ignore because the reviewer started off saying very nice things about me and the book and then, finally, in the last para, suddenly decided to turn hostile. Perhaps she wanted the review to be 'balanced.' I don't really have problems with that at all. As a trained journalist who has worked with highly demanding bosses, I have always received criticism as if it were a medal.

But there are times when you can sense that the reviewer has already made up his mind against you even without reading the book carefully. That's when it really hurts. Take, for example, the review of Chai, Chai in Outlook. The reviewer says, quite smugly:

"It’s a bit disorienting to have a man alight at 3:15 am and two pages later talk of being woken up at 4, still in the train!"

People who take book reviews appearing in Outlook seriously and who are yet to read Chai, Chai will think I am some jerk who can't even get the sequence of events right. They will never get to know that the real culprit is the reviewer who hasn't even read the book carefully. Nowhere in the book -- except in the reviewer's imagination -- does this anomaly occur.

Having made the damaging statement, the reviewer goes on:

"Ghosh works hard on the back stories (there’s a search for Lal Bahadur Shastri’s alma mater in Mughalsarai, and a visit to a dharamsala where Mahatma Gandhi once stayed). But he can’t quite pull off the trick of stripping small-town India’s facade of apparent mundaneness to find something more engaging. It’s a trick that arguably only Pankaj Mishra has pulled off with his Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. Chai, chai fails here, leaving travel writing fans unfulfilled and wondering what the fuss was all about."

Since I have the luxury of owning this blog, let me clarify that it was never my intention to carry out an academic study of the small towns covered in my book or "stripping them of their mundaneness to find something more engaging." My sole obligation was to present these towns to the reader the way I saw them -- the conclusions have been left to the reader. I was not at all aiming to pull off any trick, and I was certainly not aiming to be another Pankaj Mishra. Butter Chicken in Ludhiana is one book I am yet to read, and it is sad that the reviewer accused me of not matching up to it.

Can't blame the reviewer. He is someone called Hari Menon. Perhaps he was looking for depth. I feel really bad that I let him down.

Chai, Chai, meanwhile, chugs on. See you guys in Bangalore on November 28 and in Mumbai on December 10. Details in a day or two.

Thighs And Soul

On another day, at a lunch beneath coconut trees, a mini golf course on one side and a lake on the other, a visitor from Delhi points to a group of young Indian woman writers sitting around a table, displaying cleavages and smooth thighs. “What is the literary worth of these writers?” he says. “Do they have any writing skills? Are their stories written from the soul?”

The group around his table is silent. Then he says, “I have my doubts. They have good contacts in the media, they spend their own money to have splashy cocktail party book launches, but they will last for only a season. Next year, another group of writers will take over and these books will be forgotten. They cannot stand the test of time.”

The above two paras are extracted from a report in the New Sunday Express about the recently-held Kovalam Literary Festival. I haven't stopped smiling ever since I read the report. It does not take a genius to realise that the above-mentioned 'visitor from Delhi' is someone who is either desperate to get published or is a failed writer. A smart writer would have either admired those cleavages and thighs from a distance or would have walked over to the lunch table to silently plot a post-dinner plan when one didn't have to contend with just a view of the cleavage or the smooth thighs. Nothing is impossible -- as I have told you in my previous post. For the 'bad' impossible things, you have to be mentally prepared, and for the 'good' impossible things, you have be eternally hopeful.

Well, I am just one-book old, and my book itself is just a month old (a small announcement here: it went for reprint yesterday), so it is going to be a long, long time before I am invited -- if at all -- to a litfest where I could get to meet fellow women writers who show cleavages and smooth thighs. How I am dying to meet them, but I guess I will have to spend a few more years of long, lonely nights in front of my computer before I earn my ticket to paradise.

But it is also true that if you are a sexy woman and even if you have written an apology of a book, you don't have to wait that long in order to be invited to a litfest or to be feted by the literary world. Fame, even if lasts for 15 minutes, comes easily to you. After all, everybody, every occasion, needs its share of glamour. I know you will now say: "Wasn't that exactly the point the 'visitor from Delhi' was making?" The answer, however, is a big no.

The 'visitor' made the remark only because he felt intimidated by the cleavages and the smooth thighs. He felt threatened. He would have felt safe and secure if the women writers at the litfest had oiled their hair and had neglected to wax their arms and legs. Since he could not match them in glamour, he questioned their literary worth and suspected the lack of soul in their stories. Did he even read their books or their stories? He was plain jealous, as simple as that. He could not digest the fact that women could write well and also look sexy at the same time. He was clearly intimidated by their confidence.

One can understand this man's angst. He is a typical Indian man with the typical Indian mindset -- that a woman cannot, and should not, outdo you. If she is sexy, she cannot be a writer. If she is a writer, she cannot be sexy. If the woman turns out to be both, he finds it extremely difficult to gulp down the fact and starts questioning her integrity. To such men, I have only one thing to say: "Fuck off. Get a life. Earn the admiration of those cleavage-showing writers, impress them, instead of trying to belittle them just because they look sexy."

And who has asked the men to look unsexy? A writer does not have to look sickly and have thin arms and a small chest. There are 24 hours in a day. Even if you devote five hours to serious writing every day, that still leaves 19 hours at your disposal. Even if you have a job that requires you to put in eight hours of work, you still have 11 left to do your own thing. Can't you spend even an hour of those 11 in the gym, building your pectorals and your cardiovascular endurance? And once in a week, maybe go to the parlour and spend a little money on grooming.

Learn from Gabo. He is a good example to learn from. Gabo is Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Even in advancing age, he played tennis in order to keep fit and carefully chose his attire (from among the wide range of white) to make sure his personality was as attractive as his prose. Imagine Gabo at the Kovalam Litfest: Would he have whined and questioned the literary worth of Ms Cleavage and Ms Smooth Thighs? He would have actually complimented their writing and played with the thighs.

Nothing Is Impossible

A colleague, who had just bought a copy of Chai, Chai, came to me today. "Will you please sign it for me?" she said, "I will just be back from the evening meeting."

While she was gone, I signed the book and then thumbed opened its pages at random, just to get a feel of the book. I haven't had this luxury ever since the book was printed because of a variety of reasons. As it is, I find it embarrassing to reread my own work. Worse, mom died just eight days before it came out of the press: for weeks after her death, the book meant nothing to me except a bunch of papers stitched together. Once I began to feel less bitter about mom going away without even seeing my first book, I was overcome by nervousness regarding its launch. Once the launch was over, the novelty had worn off and the book, once again, did not mean a thing.

But this evening, thanks to the colleague who left me alone with the book for a while, I got a chance to go through it. I read through passages at random: I recognised some instantly, even the exact time of the day I wrote them and under what circumstances. But there were some I had completely forgotten about, such as the one below, which was written in November 2007 in a small hotel in Mughal Sarai barely hours after I had returned from a day trip to Banaras:

The images of the bedecked biers kept swimming in my head as the Ambassador rattled down the dusty road to Mughal Sarai. Everybody has to die one day, but you don't want to be reminded of that, do you? It is, however, not the thought of your own death that makes the sight of the biers so terrifying: it is actually the thought of your near and dear ones being carried away in that fashion. It is a thought you consider secretly in the deepest crevices of your heart, not even sharing it aloud with your own self.

Little did I know then, that in less that two years, I would be lending a shoulder to my own mother's body at that very spot. At the time, it was impossible to even imagine that my mother would die in Banaras.

That is why I tell people -- people who matter to me -- that nothing is impossible in life. Life is a bitch that can throw the most impossible on your lap while keeping you deprived lifelong of what you always thought was possible. The only occasions I don't place this view of mine forcefully is when I am in the company of male friends over drinks and when the subject of discussion is usually women: who is going around with who, who is sleeping with who, who is likely to sleep with who, who wants to sleep with who, and so on.

Many ego-balloons are pricked on such evenings. "Why on earth would she be interested in you? She is 28, while you are 40, bro". Or, "Brother, don't forget she is ex-Ms Chennai. She has people eating out of her hands. Of course you can go on a date with her. But only in your dreams. Ha ha ha ha ha!" When egos clash, I take the backseat and watch them and smile, and even tell them, albeit silently: "Brothers, stop fighting. Nothing is impossible."

Depth

Writing this post is like stabbing my friend on the back; but if I don't stab him with my words now, I might end up stabbing myself out of sheer irritation or anger. So here goes. This friend of mine, a Malayali, is a very dear friend, who is deeply rooted to his culture, which means he has read Marx and Marquez and Mukundan with equal passion. But he refused to read Chai, Chai, that is my book, for a long time. The reason being since I was his friend, and since we discussed women over wine, he thought I was not capable of displaying 'depth' in my writing.

"But how do you know whether it has depth or not without even reading it?" I protested.

"Wait, wait, I will read it. Don't worry. First let Jomi read it. I bought your book yesterday, but I gave it to Jomi. He is pucca with literature. He will tell me if your book has depth. He can distinguish between serious writing and masala writing." Jomi was a Malayali friend that my Malayali friend had recently acquired.

"What does this Jomi do?" I asked him.

"He is a poet," my friend replied.

"Ok, just fuck off," I told him.

A few days later my friend called. "I am reading your first chapter. Not bad at all, man."

"Did Jomi read the book? What did he say?"

"Oh, he liked it. He was praising your power of observation. He was telling me, 'Oh, this fellow has depth.' I am still in the first chapter. Not bad at all!" So Jomi, the poet, had given the green signal.

"Fuck off," I told him.

A few days later, my friend brought Jomi over and we went out for a drink. For most of the time, Jomi was just a shy, wiry, young and bearded Malayali who felt awkward to be in the company of a man who spoke no Malayalam. But he treated me with reverence because I was a Bengali -- a distant cousin of the Malayali. Towards the end, however, when he was many drinks down, Jomi became a revolutionary. He denounced all writers except Sarte and Nietzsche and Foucault, and he denounced all cinema except Russian and French and Japanese and Bengali and, of course, Malayalam. 'Depth' -- or the lack of it -- the criteria for his discrimination.

The bar was closing, so we bought a bottle of whisky and made a makeshift bar in the car. By now, I was myself somewhat drunk, and I finally gathered courage to ask Jomi what made him decide if a book or a film had depth or was shallow. He broke into a minor speech, invoking the names of Sartre and Kurosawa, as if they were his first cousins, but at the same time not wanting to hurt me because I was a Bengali -- his true first cousin. On the whole, we had a nice time that evening.

Now, let me sum up -- from whatever little I understood from his speech -- his criteria for 'depth'. If a certain piece of writing is difficult to understand, making you reach out for the dictionary every now and then, and that makes you realise every now and then: 'What the fuck am I doing in this world?', then the piece has 'depth'. But if a piece is so simple that you can breeze through it in a matter of minutes, then it just can't have 'depth': how can a 'deep' piece be read in a matter of minutes or hours?

Well, to each his own. But I am extremely grateful to Jomi that he placed Chai, Chai under the 'having depth' category, even though he had finished reading it -- by his own admission -- in less than four hours. Maybe he was just being nice to me, or maybe he was serious: Mr Poet was far too drunk to make false statements, or so I would like to believe.

But what is this 'depth' and 'shallow' business? Well, I shall never understand. I never studied literature to understand its nuances. According to me, a piece of writing is good if people -- from the director of a company right down to its driver -- easily understand what is being said. If the director has to scratch his head and if the driver has to look up the dictionary, then the writer has failed.

It is easy to present simple things in life in a difficult form, but very difficult to present the real depths of life in an easy, understandable form. It calls for a lot of hard work to write in a language that even your driver understands -- not only understands but also appreciates. It would be the most gratifying moment in my life if I ever find a ticket checker or a coolie reading Chai, Chai. But that would also be the most horrifying moment for Jomi, the poet from a land that champions the cause of the masses: he would instantly declare my book as non-serious, which lacks 'depth', just because a coolie was found reading it.

The Woman In The Gym

Looks can be highly deceptive, still you can tell people who read and people who don't. I am pretty sure she is not the reading type, certainly not kind the who reads people's blogs. Therefore, I can write this piece in peace.

Actually it breaks my heart to write this piece because I quite like the woman: tallish, dusky and sharp-featured. I have been seeing her in the gym for almost a year now. There are some people with who, the moment your eyes meet theirs, something starts cooking in the air. You instantly smell the chemistry. You feel her eyes are following you. She feels your eyes are following her. Even though in reality it may not be so, but the imaginary gaze piercing you from behind keeps your adrenalin pumped all the while that you are in the gym. There are days when I refuse to slow down on the treadmill even if my feet ache (I usually start my 20-minute walk at the speed of 7.1 km/hr and end at 8.5 km/hr) only because I know she is watching me in between her workouts. Only when I step off the treadmill do I realise that she is long gone. But there are days when she is still there, our eyes silently meeting every now and then, till one of us leaves the gym.

In such situations, eyes usually speak far more than words. In fact, words can spoil it. There is no dearth of cases when you fancy a person till the time he or she happens to speak to you. Really, spoken words can shatter your fantasies. It is best to speak with your eyes. Just like we do, or did, till at least this morning.

This morning, when I walked into the gym, she was nowhere in sight. I smiled at the various trainers and did my stretches and then hopped on to the treadmill. To my great joy, I discovered that she was already there, on the exercycle right next to the treadmill -- so close that we could have held each other's hands and worked out. At the cost of my prestige, I programmed the treadmill to the speed of just 6 km/hr. Nobody in the gym had ever seen me walk so slow. But today the idea was not to walk, but to watch.

She was pedalling steadily so far, but presently she slowed down. Perhaps my arrival had made her conscious. Pedalling at the lowest speed possible, she plunged her hand into her T-shirt. Was I dreaming? Her fingers kept moving inside, as if she was looking for something inside her bra. Was I dreaming? Was she teasing me? Wow. The out came a taali -- or the mangal sutra. Fuck! Was this her way of telling me, "Lay off, I am married" or "I know something is cooking between us, but let me tell you beforehand that I am married"? Her being married or not married did not make any difference to me, but what a funny, perhaps smart, way of letting me know. I smiled to myself and increased the speed slightly, but I could not entirely take my eyes off her.

She stretched the mangalsutra to its entire length and plucked out a safety pin attached to it. She undid the safety pin and proceeded to use it as a toothpick, even while she was pedalling. She took her own sweet time in getting rid of the remnants between her teeth. Last night's dinner or this morning's breakfast? Who cared. I increased my speed straight to 8 km/hr. I had already wasted eight minutes.

An Afternoon With Kishore Kumar

I am not sure how many know this, but the first full song that Kishore Kumar sang for his mentor S.D. Burman was recorded not in Bombay but in Madras, where I live. The song, featuring in a film called Bahaar, goes like this, "Kusoor aapka, huzoor aapka, na mera naam lijiye na mere baap ka..."

Now how do I know this? I heard it from Kishore Kumar himself, just a few minutes ago. In Madras, Burman dada made the young Kishore share his room, where the novice singer discovered the composer's devotion and commitment to music. "Sing straight, and the public will like you," he would tell Kishore: the same principle, in my opinion, applies to writing as well.

This entire afternoon, after a long, long time, I spent in the company of Kishore Kumar, courtesy You Tube. God bless those dedicated fans who painstakingly upload rare videos and make the lives of people like me worth living. If only I could meet them: I would hug them or maybe even touch their feet. What is life -- my life, that is -- without Kishore Kumar.

I have lost count of the number of videos I must have watched since this afternoon, so much so that my eyes hurt now. But my ears: they are still craving for one last song, just like you crave for one last drink even though you are too drunk to walk straight. There was a time, from 1996 to 2002, when I religiously wrote an annual piece on Kishore Kumar on his death anniversary for the papers I worked for. The papers would have, and give, ample space for my fanaticism regarding Kishore Kumar.

But now, in the age of file-sharing and You Tube, I find it quite pointless to waste words singing praises of someone when you can just send across a song or a link in order to convince people what a great singer Kishore Kumar was, I mean, is. Open You Tube and search for 'Kishore Kumar + live' and you'll know what I mean.

By the way, I made another discovery this afternoon. That I do not possess the Kishore Kumar song, Zindagi ka safar, hai yeh kaisa safar. It must be there in some dusty cassette, but I do not have the song either on my laptop or any of the CDs. What idli is to a Tamilian and paratha is to a Punjabi, Zindagi ka safar is to a Kishore devotee. But somehow, in my quest for rare songs, I seem to have ignored the staple songs. But do I really need them? They run in my veins.

Feel-Good Factor

Feels good when colleagues say nice things.

A Book Launch And A Diwali

During the 17 years of my professional life, I have always faced the dais, sitting quietly among the audience and taking notes. So it was natural for my mouth to go dry when I walked into the hall that was now beginning to fill up with people who would soon comprise the audience, listening to veteran theatre artiste P.C. Ramakrishna read from my book, Chai, Chai.

When the Madras Book Club proposed to hold a launch function in Chennai, I politely made two requests. One, Mr Ramakrishna should read from my book. I had heard him read V.S. Naipaul and Dom Moraes when these two idols of mine visited the city on different occasions, and since then it had been my secret dream to have Mr Ramakrishna read from my book if I ever wrote one. His voice makes even mediocre prose sound lyrical. Request no. 2 was that I should not be asked to speak at the function: it is nice to have a chat with individual readers and guests during high tea or a cocktail party, but the thought of addressing an ‘audience’ has always made me hugely nervous.

Fortunately, both my requests were accepted. But I was told that Mr Ramakrishna would have a ‘dialogue’ with me after the reading. Which meant I still had to face the audience and speak – no escape. About two dozen guests were already there when I walked into Binny’s Hall at Taj Connemara. I shook hands with some familiar faces and then headed for the water counter. I took a few sips, but my mouth remained dry. The hall was filling up fast. Few more sips of water, but no luck.

A well-known face walked in. He bought a copy at the venue and came to me. He said he could not stay on because he had a meeting, so could I please sign it for him now? He was Ramkumar, the well-known producer and the son of the legendary actor Sivaji Ganesan. “I think I’ll finish it tonight,” he said, and asked me to write down my email ID on the back page. My mouth began to feel better.

It is pointless to narrate what happened during the rest of the evening because it was a public event and those who were present are bound to have their own opinion about how the function went. As far as I am concerned, I was hugely nervous then; but now, looking back, I feel smug. Mr Ramakrishna read from my book – a dream come true; the hall was packed – the nightmare of empty seats averted; I signed over 30 books – and I am no Naipaul. The evening of October 15 was indeed a gratifying one. My heartfelt thanks to all of you who made the evening successful, especially the two readers of this blog who came all the way from Bangalore only for this event.

But the most gratifying moment that evening, for me, was when Mr Madhu, a senior member of the book club, said nice things about my blog while proposing the vote of thanks. He singled out this post for heaping praise on Ganga Mail – the story of a woman called Shivani who, at 40, realises that all her life, she has lived as a dutiful daughter, a dutiful wife, a dutiful mother, but never as herself. “And the only time when she is herself is when she is standing in front of the mirror in the bathroom,” Mr Madhu told the audience about my post. I felt quite proud, till I realised my father was there too among the audience. But father is cool; it would have been embarrassing if mother was there. She would have certainly asked me later, “What all do you write? You have a wife now, so who is this other woman called Shivani? When will you mend your ways?” But then, as most of you know, my mother missed the event by about six weeks.

If at all there is something that makes me truly glad about the evening, it is the date: October 15, just two days before Diwali. Today is Diwali. If the Gods had not been unkind, I should have been in Kanpur now with my family, smelling and savouring the typical autumn fragrance in the air, rather than putting up with the incessant sound of crackers that shook me out of sleep at six in the morning. The sound was so loud that I knew someone in my building was bursting the crackers. For a while I lay on the bed, putting up with the explosions. But when they became unbearable, I went to the balcony to spot the source of the obnoxious explosions. To my great surprise, or should I say horror, it turned out to be the middle-aged woman in the building who still has the power to make heads turn. From the balcony, I watched her placing the ‘bomb’ on the road, bending over to light the fire, in the process thrusting out her ample but shapely posterior, and then running back as the ‘bomb’ exploded. Her family, standing at a safe distance, applauded her. Still half-asleep, I could not decide whether to appreciate the sight of her thrust-out butt or to feel irritated by the explosions. But my road was in a mess: littered by paper fragments from the exploded ‘bombs’.

I have never stayed in Chennai, or in any other place, during Diwali: all my life, no matter where I have been, I have always made it a point to be in Kanpur during the festival, come what may. The only exception was the year 1994 when, for reasons I can’t recall, I was detained in Delhi. As the years wore on, I took the Diwali visits very seriously. My mother had developed a heart condition, and one never knew which Diwali would be the last one in the company of the entire family. I tried to make the most of each visit, taking as many pictures I could. Each year, after the end of Diwali, I would touch wood and take the train or flight back to Chennai.

But I had no idea that the Diwali of 2008 would be my last Diwali with the entire family. My mother, in spite of her dilated heart, wasn’t doing so badly. Nevertheless, I took pictures as usual, little knowing that they would be the last pictures I would be taking as an unorphaned son. My mom died just six weeks before this year’s Diwali. According to Hindu custom, we are not supposed to celebrate any festival for one whole year. So even if I went home this Diwali, it would have comprised awkward and painful moments between me, my father and my brother.

Therefore, the book launch came in handy. The success of the event distracted us from the fact that we should all have ideally been in Kanpur at this moment. So, is there God who first buggers you and then seeks to alleviate your pain? I do not know. I want to show you a picture of my mother which I took last Diwali – little did I know then that this would be our last Diwali together. I sought blessings from this picture when I went for the book-launch function.

Acceptance

In a couple of weeks I shall turn four years old as a blogger. I was still not 35, and still single, when I started the blog. Circumstances were so different then. Writing was a pleasure then, and getting published a distant dream. Each morning, when I woke up to answer the doorbell, I didn't know which of the girlfriends it could be till I opened the door. There have been times when two people landed up almost at the same time, and the scenes that followed -- well, I wished mother Earth could swallow me right away. Back then, I had a mother whose sole mission in life, at the time, was to find me a wife.

How quickly things can change. Today, I am almost 39. Writing is still a pleasure, but it is also burdensome at times. The dream of becoming a published writer has been accomplished and therefore lost its charm: I have to now reset the dream and aim for becoming an accomplished writer. And these days, when I answer the doorbell in the mornings, it is either the maid or the cook. Their arrival is followed by a call from wife, who is usually at work even before I wake up: "Has the maid come? And what about the cook?" So I have a wife now, but a mother no longer.

But on the whole, Ganga Mail has had a satisfactory journey during these four years. Statistics can never match sentiments, but nearly 200 unique hits a day, about 2.7 lakh total hits so far and over 12,000 profile views till date (even though I am not a pretty woman) -- they make me feel good. These figures are very modest, even pathetic, when compared with the popularity of the blogs of the big guns. But then, I never aspired to be a big gun. Blogging, for me, has always been an emotional outlet. I share things I feel strongly about. If I like a particular Kishore Kumar song, or if I wish to make a point about relationships, I can't catch a man on the street and tell him about my views. Nor can I inflict my views on other people at a party or a gathering: I find that most obnoxious. The blog is the perfect ventilator: just type away.

Touch wood, I've always had a set of readers who seemed to agree with most of what I've had to say. In other words, I found acceptance, and nothing can be more gratifying than that. Acceptance is something that you seek all your life, so it feels nice when a set of readers shift a bit and make space for you in the middle of the sofa and tell you, "Come, come, sit here. Tell us your story."

Acceptance does not always come easily. There was one Ms P who did not like my blog when I started it. She was a reader of my column in the newspaper and she said she liked what I wrote. But about my blog, she had this to say, "I think it is sick!" Today, she looks forward to my posts and calls me if I go missing from the blog for a long time. She was only 18 then, today she is 22. Somewhere along the way, she accepted me.

But something strikes me now. Once you find acceptance, do you remodel your thoughts to keep them within the limits of what would be largely acceptable? Why I am asking this is because, before I started writing this post, I read through some of my earliest posts. This was the first time I was reading them ever since I wrote them, and I was surprised. Here was a man who wrote what he thought, and with considerable clarity. He did not have to worry about, "What will people say?" To tell you the truth, at the cost of sounding conceited, I was rather charmed by those pieces. I am no longer him. Today, I think a dozen times about what to write about and how to write it, so as not to offend anyone or invite someone's ridicule. The invisible faces of readers dance around my eyes as I write: I feel as if they are watching. Their invisible presence makes me extremely conscious, and as a result, I end up not saying half the things that I had intended to say. In other words, I don't want to lose the acceptance I have earned. In other words, I am still seeking fresh acceptance even after having found it.

It may be sad, but that is how life is: we all slog, till our dying day, to find acceptance. We tend to do things the right way in order to avoid rejection. As children, we seek acceptance from parents and teachers. As youngsters, we seek acceptance from people our age, especially from members of the opposite sex. As young men and women, we seek acceptance from our bosses and from the people we are dating or about to be married. As married individuals, we seek acceptance from our spouses and, in many cases, also from people from the opposite sex who are not our spouses. As parents, we seek acceptance from our children. When we are older, we seek acceptance from our grown-up children. After a while, we seek acceptance from our grandchildren: do they think of us as the ideal grandparents? Finally, we seek acceptance from the Maker. An entire lifetime spent in search of acceptance!

Most of the time, people around you don't even care whether you are acceptable or not. They just about tolerate your existence because you happen to be in their lives. If they find you useful, they will respect you. If you are of no use to them, they will ignore you, irrespective of how hard you have worked in order to become acceptable. To give you a frivolous yet illustrative example: when I was required to shave my head and moustache after my mother died, I was greatly distressed. As it is I was coping with the loss of my mother, and now I had to cope with the loss of my identity. Ever since as a teenager, I had never been without my hair or my moustache. The decision to sport a moustache was influenced by my admiration for Jackie Shroff, but after a point the moustache became part of my identity. And now it felt miserable to part with it. Would I still be acceptable to my society without the most important mark of my identity?

I need not have worried. No one failed to recognise me because of my missing moustache. And no one -- those who did not know about my mother's demise -- asked me how or why it went missing. In fact, there have been occasions when people enquired about my long absence from Chennai even after noticing my shaved head and the missing moustache. "Well, I had gone to Kanpur. My mother passed away, you know. Don't you see my shaved head?" I would say.

"Oh, is that why you shaved your head? I am so sorry. I thought this is your new look," they would reply. At least five people have apologised to me so far for having thought that I took my hair and moustache off because of "fashion". And here I was, killing myself at the thought of getting tonsured. The world doesn't really care: if it has to accept you, it will accept you no matter how you look or what you have to say. If it chooses to ignore you, it will ignore you, no matter how much time you spend in front of the mirror grooming yourself or practising those lines. But then, no one ever gets to know whether he or she will be accepted or rejected. Even if one is rejected, there is always a chance of being accepted the next time.

Therefore, we labour on in order to be accepted, and that includes us bloggers as well. None of us is ever going to write what we really want to write. Rejection by readers is too huge a price to pay. So you write what they want you to write, and not what you want to write.

No Comparison, But Still Feels Good

A picture taken by a friend. Location: Landmark bookstore, Spencer Plaza, Chennai.

Speakers

This evening, I got off from work really early, even before the sun could set. So I walked back home, a modest distance of 2 km. As I was crossing Pondy Bazaar, I was suddenly gripped by the urge to buy something -- anything. After all, it is once in a blue moon that I get to smell the evening air ever since I switched jobs 18 months ago, so why not celebrate by gifting myself something. But what do I buy? Wife would kill me if I bought another shirt or a pair of shoes. My wardrobe is full of clothes I haven't touched yet. Each day, I wear one of the /grey T-shirts in my collection and the same pair of floaters to work: who is going to see me?

In any case, Pondy Bazaar is one place I wouldn't be caught dead shopping for clothes, though I have friends who are die-hard Pondy-Bazaar shoppers. Once upon a time, a long time ago, I had a friend who even shopped for her lingerie in Pondy Bazaar. The labels on the undergarments would bear the name of a certain garment store which is always crowded with people who seem to have come from the suburbs or neighbouring towns to do their monthly or maybe yearly shopping. I had no idea those guys were also into manufacturing bras and panties. She would fume each time I pulled her leg about the tags. "How does it matter what I wear inside? Tell me, how does it matter?" I would then seek to extricate myself from the situation by saying that I was only kidding.

But the reality -- no offence meant to anyone -- is that the underwear you wear speaks a lot about your personality. If you wear VIP or Rupa, it means you are either a miser or fiercely Indian or are unaware that we live in a globalised world where you no longer have to ask your cousin to get Marks & Spencer underwear from London (in any case, I have never quite understood why a man should wear briefs with a feminine name. It is like a bra being labelled as 'Dilip' or 'Rakesh': would anyone buy it?) If you wear Jockey, you are smart: the price is almost Indian, and the label and the cut entirely Western. If you wear Polo Ralph Lauren or Calvin Klein, even if you can't really afford them all the time, it shows you are ambitious. The wise ones, however, would mix and match: wear Rupa to the gym, Jockey to work and save the hard-earned Calvin Klein for the night out.

Sorry for digressing. I was talking about my walk back home this evening, when I was suddenly gripped by the urge to buy something. So clothes and shoes were ruled out. The only time when my wife does not complain about me splurging money is when I buy books or music. She gives me a blank cheque: "Buy anything that catches your fancy." But you can't buy books or music in Pondy Bazaar. So I chose the middle path: what is music without a good pair of speakers, so why not a new set of speakers for my laptop? And Pondy Bazaar is one place in Chennai where you can get a good pair of speakers at a fairly reasonable price. So there I was, lugging back home a new pair of Creative speakers.

It was with a heavy heart, though, that I replaced my old set of speakers. Those speakers had been my companion through the best years of my life. I had bought them, in 2004, also on impulse. I had just discovered internet radio, and sitting in the office one afternoon, I suddenly resolved that I must get a pair of speakers right away, come what may. So, along with a colleague, I walked to the nearest electronics shop, in Royapettah, and bought whatever was available. The speakers were dubiously named 'Sambada', and cost me Rs 1100. It wasn't entirely satisfied with their performance when they tested it in the shop for my benefit, but since I had made up my mind, I had to have it.

But by the time I brought them home, the speakers, as if by magic, had undergone a transformation. Even before I could attached the wires, they had attuned themselves to the beats of R.D. Burman and to the throat of Kishore Kumar. The rest, as they say, is history.

It is one thing to listen to music on a large music system, the 2000+ watt type, and quite another on smaller speakers. The large one invariably ends up adorning the entertainment cabinet in the drawing room: it does little for your soul. When you play a CD on it, there is something impersonal about the music, which mostly serve as a background sound while you go about your chores. But when music emanates from the laptop speakers, it usually has your 100% attention. There is a certain cosiness about the setting -- you, your writing, your favourite drink and your favourite music. They all work in tandem to lift your spirits to a level that even years of practising spiritualism can't.

Laptop speakers -- don't underestimate them: their sound quality is often better than the most sophisticated of music players -- are an important tool for anyone who follows the lonely profession of writing. When the rest of the world is fast asleep and when you grappling with words sitting at your desk, nothing can be more reassuring or rejuvenating than the sound of your kind of music. The music is loud enough for you to clearly hear the strains of violins playing in the background, yet not too loud to disturb your spouse or neighbour.

The speakers have been with me ever since the time I did not have a spouse -- when the laptop was my spouse, my lover, my everything. I would get back from work every evening, around nine, swtich on the laptop and pour myself a drink. Then I would start working on either my column or a new blog post. At times, the music would dictate my writing, and at times, it was the other way round. But on the whole, we were one happy family.

Those speakers played so many songs that I had lost during my childhood, including this. As a child, I was not at all aware of the sensuality hidden in many of the songs: it was only the tune that had stayed in my mind and which made me desperately search for them decades later. The speakers also played me Sahir Ludhianvi's songs whose meaning I could not grasp as a child or as a youth, but which tormented me big time now. You are welcome to read this post. The speakers also played me music I had recently discovered -- from Mezzoforte to Madonna to various chants about Shiva and Hanuman. The music would lull me to sleep in that cosy bachelor pad of mine -- the playlist had enough songs to last, non-stop, for three days.

How I miss those days: drink, write, sleep -- with your kind of music playing in the background. If you were lucky on a particular day, you had somebody to share the bed with. And if you were extremely fortunate, the person who shared the bed also happened to share your taste in music. But that was only once in a blue moon -- mostly in fantasy. In real life, it has been impossible to find someone who shares your emotions about Sahir's lyrics in the Kabhie Kabhie song, Main har ek pal ka shayar hoon... There were people, of course, but they lived in far-off places such as Pune or Delhi. What was the use?

Finally, a few hours ago, I unplugged my old speakers and replaced them with the new ones. For a moment it felt as if I was taking the old ones on a funeral procession. But that wasn't the case : they were now going to adorn my yoga room and pep up my yoga practice. So why did I disconnect them from the laptop? That's because one of the speakers had started acting up, and it was too burdensome for the other speaker to do justice to R.D. Burman songs, even though it tried its best.

As for the new ones -- what a sexy pair of speakers!. I almost fell off my chair when I tested them on an R.D. Burman song, Bachke rehna re baba from Pukaar. Wife complained, "Reduce the volume! I can't hear you." But I wasn't even talking. Only listening. Nevertheless I stopped that song and inserted a newly-bought CD into the laptop. It is a rare compilation of Tagore songs sung by various old-time singers including K.L. Saigal. I had bought it in Kolkata for my father -- among the many other CDs and books I bought for him in order to compensate for the absence of the woman he had lived with for 40 long years. In fact, my parents were considering to celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary on December 4 this year by throwing a dinner party.

Anyway, she is gone now and therefore the new CD collection. So, on my new speakers, I listened to K.L. Saigal singing two famous Tagore songs, Aami tomaye joto and Ek tuku chhoan laage. I felt like crying. I don't know why. Saigal was a hardcore Punjabi and a hardcore drunkard -- someone a Bengali might not have approved of. But Saigal was also a singer par excellence -- which you will realise only when you listen to this album. It was not for nothing that Kishore Kumar was a crazy fan of Saigal. So far, I had heard these two Tagore songs only in Kishore's voice and had liked them. But now, in Saigal's voice, these songs stirred me. They made me tearful. What an auspicious inauguration of the new speakers. The old ones saw me through happy times; while these, I am sure, will see me through difficult times.

Flight To Kolkata -- Part I

Very often, you can smell beauty even before you can see it. Just like I smelt her now, as she stood just barely inches ahead of me in the bus that was taking us from the airport terminal to the tarmac. Perhaps the aircraft was still being cleaned of the bottles and paper cups and napkins that people leave behind in the seat pockets, so the bus stood on the tarmac for an interminably long time. Passengers stood inside like cattle, but I did not mind one bit. For, she stood right in front of me, so close that I could tell that she had washed her hair with Sunsilk shampoo that morning and was wearing Jovan Musk.

She had earphones plugged, and the source of music was tucked inside her hip pocket, where she would reach every now and then, maybe to skip songs. But in the process, she would repeatedly draw my attention to her sculpted posterior, which did complete justice to the shape of her black jeans. I prayed they take another hour to ready the plane. Durga Puja could wait, so what if it was already ashtami and it would be almost noon by the time I landed in Kolkata? But before some good things can begin, some other good things must come to an end. The door of the bus slid open and she stepped out, putting her hand one more time on her hip pocket.

She headed for the rear door of the plane and I for the front. But before we began walking diagonally apart, she looked at me. It was a proper look that she gave, that lasted for a few seconds. Taken aback, I involuntarily ran my fingers through my hair, only to realise I have no hair now: it will be several weeks before my pate returns to normal. "But she still looked at me, not bad!" I smiled to myself and climbed up the steps.

It is rare for a Bengali man to run into a Bengali woman in Chennai, unless the two are already related, mostly by way of marriage, or are already friends. It is, however, not so uncommon for one Bengali man to run into another Bengali man in Chennai, but then, what does one do with a Bengali man? It is one thing to be a Bengali man and quite another to be a Bengali woman. The former can be irritating, but the latter is always irresistible.

It is with theese thoughts I boarded the phlight to Kolkata. My next seat neighbhaar ooaas, as usual, a man. God has been so aan-kind to me. He ooaas a north Indiaan man, the man next to me. Ebhen bephore he ooaas required to tie the seat-belt, he had opened a tiffin-box and phinished four alu porotas. I kaarsed God. One, he makes a man sit next to me, nebhar a oo-man. On top oph eet, he makes that man eat alu porotas, which is my all-time phebareet, right in phrant of my eyez. There is a limit to tolaarance. What the phaak? Tempted by the smell of his porotas, I ordered porota roll that happened to be on the menu oph the ayaarlines. They gave me leathery porotas philled with dry poneer. And on top oph it, charged me one hundred and twenty rupees for the stoopid phood. What the phaak was going on? The only thought that kept my spirits phlying ooaas the thought oph the garl who I met in the ayaarport baas -- the one who wore black jeans and who had taacked haar iPod in haar hip pockeyt. I could not see haar now, baat I knew she was somewhere theyar. And the phaarst thing I did on landing ooaas to look phor haar.

Didn't I just tell you that Bengali men -- and that includes me -- can be highly irritating, while Bengali woman -- whether they are residents of Kankurgachhi in Kolkata or K.K. Nagar in Chennai -- are always irresistible? Ms Black Jeans, however, lives in Kodamabakkam, as I learned upon reaching Kolkata airport, where we got a chance to make small talk while waiting for the conveyor belt to spit out our respective bags. Kodambakkam is a stone's throw from my place in Chennai, and she said she has been living there for five years now, all by herself, in the flat of a family friend who lived far away in Hyderabad. And then I wondered: where the phaak was I all these yeeaars?

Missing Mom And Other Stories

I must admit it feels good to know that your book is finally in the shops. Even better, that it is available on online bookstores. Till the other day I've been ordering books by Henry Miller and Eric Newby from these sites, and now it feels strange -- in a nice way, though -- that your book is also up there, being offered at the customary discount and all.

But it is also true that I am not being able to relish these moments the way I would have in the normal course. One reason, of course, is the absence of mother. During the two weeks I was in Kanpur after her cremation, a part of my mind believed that she would return one of these days and that her death was only a bad dream. But only after returning to Chennai did it strike me that her absence was now permanent.

The other reason I am in no mood to relish these moments is I am tired. Very tired -- my body and mind. I have hardly slept in the past three weeks. I am working on a new manuscript, and it needs to be done fast or else my thoughts would evaporate. The thought of writing this book came to my mind the afternoon my mother was cremated. I was standing by the Ganges, staring at the river, with some 20 bodies burning around me including that of my mother, when it struck me: this is Banaras, where people come to die; and what a waste it would be if I did not record my experience of being right in the womb of death?

Quite a few people, mostly Westerners, have written about the burning ghats of Banaras. But a visiting Westerner is so dazzled by the spectacle of several burning bodies simultaneously that he remains blind to every other colour dancing on the ghat other than the yellow of the fire. And here I was, who was not only dazzled by the yellow of the fire leaping out from the burning pyres but also someone who had his dear mother burning in one of those pyres. I had been through shit which a Westerner can't even imagine to be in. Who could be a better person than me to write about Banaras and its famous burning ghat?

Of course the book is not going to be just about a cremation in Banaras. There would be a lot more to it. That's how the publishers want it. They want me to tell a story. Since I know no story well enough other than my own, this book will be my story, more or less. In spite of toiling for the past three weeks, I've reached only one-third of the word count I am aiming for. But the real problem is: each night when I sit down to write, I am forced to recall my mother's death. I am forced to recall the same images again and again, in order to to be able to write. And that drains me out.

Worse, as soon as I finish this manuscript, I have to get down to working on the book on Chennai. The publishers have already paid me an advance for the Chennai book and they would not buy any excuse.

Fortunately, my mother was still very much alive and lively when I had told her about signing the contract for the Chennai book. "All the best, beta," she had told me. Those were her exact words. But now I feel tired. There was a time, just three years ago, when I was desperately hoping to find a publisher. But today I am desperate for a break. That maybe because I also have a job to keep.

Whatever the case, my back hurts. My eyes hurt too. Also a constant pain in my left arm -- the result of typing non-stop with my left index finger. Someone, please, give me, or get me, a job that lets me be. All I need is a little money that takes care of my bills and my booze and cigarettes, and plenty of free time to write and to travel. In return, I promise, I will give you undivided attention for five full hours every single day -- on days I am in town, that is -- which might just change your luck for the better.

Chai, Chai

My book, Chai, Chai: Travels In Places Where You Stop But Never Get Off, should be in the bookshops in a day or two.

A formal launch, by the Madras Book Club, is scheduled for October 15, 6.30 pm, at Taj Connemara. Veteran theatre artiste P.C. Ramakrishna will be reading from the book.

So, welcome one and all. The presence of those who have been reading me for a while would hopefully make up for the absence of my mother, who chose to depart from this world just a few weeks before this event. It would also be nice to meet people who I have known so far as 'anonymous' commentators.

Rite And Wrong

When I started this blog four years ago, I called it Bytheganges as an expression of my identity. As a Bengali who was born and bred in Kanpur, who went on to work in Delhi and then shifted base to Madras, I still can’t say with certainty who am I. The only certainty in my life is the river: I belong to the culture that has flourished on its banks for thousands of years, the culture which considers the Ganga, or the Ganges, not just a river but also a mother. But never had I imagined that someday I would be part of the multitude that observes elaborate rituals on the ghats of Ganga. For me, these were people meant to be observed, to be written about. They were my subjects. Now I have joined them.

This morning, I got my head tonsured and my moustache removed at the Massacre Ghat in Kanpur. The ghat is named so because some 300 British men, women and children were slaughtered here by Indian mutineers on June 27, 1857. It is one of the cleaner ghats of Kanpur because the polluting tanneries are located further downstream.

What a beautiful morning: an overcast sky, a powerful yet pleasant breeze sweeping down from across the river, and the river itself swollen and flowing so fast as if it is in a hurry to get to the next city. On a normal day, this would have been a good place to spend the morning, under the shade of the Shiva temple and in the company of monkeys and a handful of bathers. But right now I was required to offer food to my mother’s soul and then surrender myself to the barber.

I first lost my mother. Then I lost my looks. Mother won’t return, though looks will as the hair begins to grow; but it is not at all funny when you look into the mirror and find a complete stranger looking back at you. This is certainly not the time for a new look: it would have been far more comforting to see my old self in the mirror –the self who stood by me and helped me accept my mother’s death.

I am not a great fan of rituals unless they evoke nostalgia, and I could have resisted the tonsuring. But I did for my mother. She was a fastidious woman when it came to rituals, and I did not wish to let her down. It gives me immense satisfaction that I am doing this for her, because after this, I will never get another chance to do anything for her.

But I am sure my mother will forgive me for not strictly observing the do’s and dont’s prescribed for a man who has just lost his parent. Tradition demands that for 12 days after her death, I should cook my own meal, on firewood, in an earthen pot and eat in seclusion. The meal should not be anything more than boiled rice and raw banana or potato. For dinner, it should only be fruits and sweets. Anything that tickles the taste-buds is strictly prohibited. Alcohol is out of the question. Amid the gloom of death, such austerities can only fan the fire of emotions even when you are trying to take everything in your stride and move on.

While my lunch has been bland, I have been shamelessly indulging in samosas and jalebis. When you are in Kanpur, it is a bigger sin to resist samosas and jalebis. And since I have been writing most evenings, one can find bottles of whisky in my secluded room upstairs. That much liberty I can take with my mother. She was my mother, after all.

By The Ganges Part II: Becoming A Man

Sometime ago, I wrote a post about how, someday, I would like to be a new-age spiritual guru whose commandment no. 1 would be:

Accept that death is inevitable: anybody who has been born has to die one day. The only question is when. Once you make peace with the 'when' factor, you have beaten death as well as the gloom that comes with it. Treat death like a girlfriend who just happened to knock at your door an hour before she was expected. Would you turn her away? No. You are most likely to say: "Oh, that's early! Am still in my pajamas. Anyway, now that you have come, please come in."

I am proud to report that I am very close to becoming a full-fledged guru because I tried the commandment, the most difficult one, on myself and came out with flying colours. Nine days ago, my mother died. Not a drop of tear. Not an ounce of sadness. But two regrets: that she died precisely three days before her 60th birthday, and precisely eight days before I held in my hand the first copy of Chai, Chai, my first book. I was deperately hoping that she got to see the book before anything happened to her.

I wish to ask her why she couldn't postpone her departure by just 10 days. Maybe she had a plan in mind whose import I will get to understand in the coming years. Or maybe she had no time to plead with Death to postpone her departure by a couple of weeks: she died in a matter of seconds, while having lunch with my father and brother at my brother's home in Banaras.

While my father taught me how to think, it was my mother who had taught me how to write. One rainy evening, some 30 years ago, she patiently explained to me how a story should have an intro, a middle and an ending. Since then, I have always worked hard on the beginning and the ending. The middle usually took care of itself. This, when I did not even know that I would someday write for a living. Eventually, it was the writer in me that rescued me from being devastated by my mother's death.

For years, ever since she underwent a bypass surgery in the year 2000 and was found to have a very weak heart, the thought of losing her had tormented me. Every now and then, I would torture myself imagining what my reaction would be when I got the bad news. But the bad news never came. When it finally did, I was calm. Very calm. I was getting ready for work that afternoon when my father called. After he hung up, I put on my jeans and walked up to the mirror and dabbed some aftershave lotion. I then smiled at myself in the mirror. I wanted to see if a man who has just lost his mother could still smile. I could. I had won.

I could afford to smile because I was no longer myself. I was now a writer who was out to cover the most important event of his life with an invisible notebook in hand, and if he were to be honest to his job, he could not afford to get emotional. I remember admiring the breasts of the Punjabi air hostesses on the flight to Delhi. I am not really a breast person, but the way they were portruding out of their airline uniform, I could not help noticing. I told myself: "Is it proper to be admiring breasts when you know your mother has just died?" But the writer in me quickly patted my head: "Your mother is not going to come alive if you turn your eyes away. So admire them if you want to, go ahead."

So I admired the breasts, had a few drinks upon reaching Delhi, and had a good night's sleep before taking the flight to Banaras in the morning. The only thing I did not do -- and could not do -- was eat. It was not out of sadness for losing my mother, but out of consideration for my father and brother. They had not eaten too: they were up all night, keeping a watch on my mother who was now lying on a bed of ice.

When I reached Banaras the next morning, I came -- finally -- face to face with the moment I had dreaded the most: watching my mother dead. There she was, sleeping calmly, as if she had had a long day. She showed no reaction when I walked in. That was when I knew she was really gone, otherwise she would have jumped up from the bed of ice and hugged me.

I stroked her cheeks out of affection, something I wish I had done while she was alive, and touched her feet out of respect, something I had never done before either. It had always been a hug, always initiated by her, that had defined the mother-son love all these years. I had never stroked her cheeks or touched her feet or hugged her on my own all these years simply out of the fear that she would miss me even more and feel miserable due to my absence. I wanted to be a man. But right now there was no harm stroking her cheeks or touching her feet: she was too fast asleep to realise my touch. And thus began my mother's final journey, snaking its way through the narrow streets of Banaras and ending at the Manikarnika Ghat, where every devout Hindu desires to be cremated. If you are cremated there, as they say, you go straight to heaven, freed at once from the cycle of birth and death. And not everybody is fortunate to be cremated at Manikarnika: there are plenty of people who, when they realise their end is near, come to live in Banaras. But when death takes its own sweet time in coming, their impatience takes them back to their respective hometowns. But the moment they set foot on their hometown, death decides to catch up. Their dream of dying in Banaras remains unfulfilled.

That way, my mother was lucky. The religious and god-fearing woman that she was, she must be extremely glad that she was cremated at Banaras. It was as if she had planned her death, without letting any of us know. I will spare you the details of the cremation: I will present them to you some other day, on some other platform. Suffice to say that the moment I touched the fire on her lips -- Hindus call it mukhaagni -- I was instantly transformed from a Momma's Boy into a Man. In Banaras, there is no room for tokenism: mukhaagni means mukhaagni, you really have to touch the fire on the lips of the person you are cremating.

Within three hours, my mother was reduced to ashes. Everything was gone, except her navel. Now that was a revelation: when you burn a body the traditional way, in wood, the navel is one part which refuses to be turned into ashes. In an electric crematorium, however, the whole body turns into ashes within a matter of minutes. But when you cremate a body on a wooden pyre, the navel remains intact, even though it is charred. I was handed my mother's navel in an earthen pot. It looked like a burnt piece of tandoori chicken. As instructed by the priest, I flung the piece into the Ganga. My act had delivered my mother from the cycle of life and death.

Paid Sex

This afternoon I posted this link as my G-talk status message. In the evening, a well-meaning friend pinged me. Her message was short and firm.

"I have a thought: You should take that link off."

Without wasting a moment I changed my status message. "But I liked it," I protested later.

"Whatever, but don't forget that your book is going to be out soon. You don't want people to associate you with just sex, do you?" She had a point. In fact, the thought had crossed even my mind when I was posting the link, and that is why I removed it the moment she asked me to. I was not very comfortable with the idea of displaying -- as my status message -- the autobiography of a man who took pride in sleeping with 1,300 prostitutes. I myself do not believe in the concept of paid sex, not because of moral reasons, but because I simply cannot come to terms with the fact that a man has to pay for sex.

I have been to a brothel only twice in my life, on G.B. Road in Delhi, when I was 27 or 28. On both occasions, it was curiosity that took me there: the urge to take a look at the human hiding inside the prostitute. There had been times when my friends narrated their experiences in red light areas, and the only question I asked them was: "What did you guys talk about?"

"Talk? What is there to talk? We only do."

"But still, she must have had something to say."

"All that I don't remember." That was their standard reply. They were puzzled that I should ask such questions.

So when I went to the brothel on those two occasions, my sole purpose was to talk; to check out the woman behind the whore. Whore is such an obscene and ugly word, come to think of it, but then, it has been coined by the world and not by me.

Both the visits were impulsive: me and a bunch of colleagues being dropped back home past midnight, and suddenly we decide to take a detour. The driver had no problem driving us all the way to Old Delhi as long as we paid for his cravings. Fortunately, there would always be a colleague who felt too shy to come up. He would stay back in the car, looking after our wallets and watches. It made sense to leave them behind, because once you enter the brothel -- at least this was the case in Delhi -- they suddenly hike the rates and then make you take off even your socks to see if there is any money hidden apart from what you are already carrying in accordance with the deal struck before entry.

During my first visit, the woman assigned to me was jovial. As soon as we entered the cubicle, she took off her salwar and lay down on what looked more like a small-time doctor's examination table. In different circumstances, I could have been a gynaecologist following a patient into the cubicle. But in this case, it was the patient who called the shots: she handed me a condom. I told her it was of no use. We chatted for about 10 minutes during which she told me about her family back in Andhra Pradesh, and in the end kissed me on the forehead, saying how I reminded her of her younger brother.

During my visit no. 2, the encounter with the woman assigned to me was not so cordial. She was a fat, foul-tempered woman, whose hometown -- or 'native place', as they say -- also happened to be in Andhra Pradesh. "You are so drunk, are you even capable of doing anything?" she asked me.

"But I only want to talk."

"Talk? Talk about what? If you want to do it, do it. Don't waste my time. Who asked you do drink so much before coming here." She put her clothes on.

On both occasions, once we exchanged notes after coming out of the brothel, we realised it was only the driver who had extracted the full value for money. No one else really had the courage. The thought of paid sex can be very tempting, but once it comes to you on a platter, you are likely to look for ways to escape holding the platter in your hands. I mean no offence to gentlemen who happen to be connoisseurs of paid sex. It is just that I would like to be counted out.

But why, then, did I post the scandalous link as my status message? That's because the whole thing is so well-written. If a piece of writing makes you want to clap for a man who takes pride in having slept with 1,300 prostitutes, then there is a lot to learn about the art -- of writing, that is -- from him. And it is not the style alone, but the content too. He is being honest. He speaks the truth -- at least what he believes is the truth -- and nothing can be more seductive than the truth.

And when it comes to sex, honesty is like gold, for no one ever speaks the truth. You like sex, but you can't be honest about your cravings. You don't like the sex you've just had, but you still can't be honest about your disappointment. You have your own ideas of good sex, but you can't spell them out. But this man does:

The great thing about sex with whores is the excitement and variety. If you say you’re enjoying sex with the same person after a couple of years, you’re either a liar or on something. Of all the sexual perversions, monogamy is the most unnatural. Most of our affairs run the usual course. Fever. Boredom. Trapped. This explains much of the friction in our lives—love being the delusion that one woman differs from another. But with brothels there is always the exhilaration of not knowing what you’re going to get.

The problem with normal sex is that it leads to kissing and pretty soon you’ve got to talk to them. Once you know someone well the last thing you want to do is screw them. I like to give, never to receive; to have the power of the host, not the obligation of the guest. I can stop writing this and within two minutes I can be chained, in the arms of a whore. I know I am going to score and I know they don’t really want me. And within 10 minutes I am back writing. What I hate are meaningless and heartless one-night stands where you tell all sorts of lies to get into bed with a woman you don’t care for.

It is obvious that this man is a talented wordsmith. And it is sad that a talented wordsmith should have to pay for sex. But then, he likes it only that way and in no other way, as he makes us believe with his convincing wordsmithery.

Lost Lines

Lines you don't hear in Hindi movies these days:

1. "Main maa banne waali hoon": I am pregnant (The announcement by the girl usually arouses extreme reactions -- either that of joy or shock, depending upon whether she got pregnant before or after marriage).

2. "Sharam nahin aati badon se zubaan ladaate huey?": Aren't you ashamed to argue with elders in this fashion? (Usually spoken by the mother to the rebel son who is rude to his father. Occasionally, the line is accompanied by a slap).

3. "Beti, bhagwaan ke ghar der hai, andher nahin": My child, there might be delay in god's house, but never darkness (Usually mouthed by a kind-looking, lean priest, to a hapless woman, who has become a victim of circumstances).

4. "Main is shahar ka ek shareef aur izzatdar aadmi hoon": I am one of the city's decent and respectable men (This is how a small-time criminal who has now become a big businessman and even a bigger criminal introduces himself to the new police inspector in the locality).

5. "Khabardaar jo kisi ne hilne ki koshish ki": No one dare move (Spoken by the man who holds the gun: he could be the hero, the villain or the police inspector).

6. "You are under arrest" (Spoken, of course, by the police officer, usually towards the end of the movie).

7. "Geraftaar kar lo in sab ko!": Arrest these people! (This line ends the fight between the good guys and the bad guys, and also signals the end of the movie).

8. "Order! Order!" (That's the judge).

I Am What I Am, Or Am I?

Dear S,

I should have been ideally writing this letter to you with a fountain pen, on a fresh A4 piece of paper. I have a bunch of expensive fountain pens sitting inside my wardrobe. They have been there ever since I lost a Mont Blanc from home. But who has the patience. I would possibly end up striking out every word I write and then tear up the sheet and take a fresh one. The 'delete' and 'backspace' buttons have changed the way I think. There would be a dozen paper balls on my desk before I could write a decent letter. It is so much better this way, though not necessarily as enjoyable.

Why I am writing to you tonight is because I have not written a real letter in a long time. I have been writing for the paper, I have been writing for this blog, I even managed to write a full-length book -- but in all those I have been a sort of performer who is deliberately selective about what is to be written and what is to be held back. The blog, however, gives me the liberty to be as myself as possible, but even there, of late, I realised that I am no longer able to write what I feel.

There was a time when I wrote essays on subjects like sex and fidelity. I wrote about sex and fidelity even after I got married. But today, I no longer have the courage or inclination to write about such subjects. Is that because I have already said whatever I had to say? Is that because I am beginning to worry too much about what people will think or say? Or is it that I am getting old? Or is it that I have stopped feeling?

If I analyse, I think it's the last one. I have stopped feeling. A few weeks ago, Gulshan Bawra, the lyricist, died. I felt very sad that he died, because only a few months before, I had bought a CD in which he pays tribute to R.D. Burman on his birth anniversary. For fans of R.D. Burman, this CD is a must-listen. Speaking in Punjabi-accented Hindi, he recounts anecdotes concerning himself and Pancham that were crucial to the creation of the eight or nine songs featured in the CD. Anecdotes such as, how during the making of Kasme Vaade, Pancham came for dinner to Gulshan Bawra's house and started humming to his wife Anju in a certain tune,

"Sarson ka saag tu banana Anju
sarson kasaag tu banana Anju...
Pehle tu mera ek peg banana
pehle tu mera ek peg banana..."

Literally speaking, what Pancham was telling Gulshan Bawra's wife was this: "Anju, make sarson ka saag, but before that, fix a drink for me." But Gulshan Bawra got the message: Pancham was actually indicating the tune so that he could write the lyrics.

Eventually, the 'Sarson ka saag' humming became immortal as:

"Kasme vaade nibhayenge hum
milte rahenge janam janam...
Tu hai mere jeene ka sahara
barson ka khoya hua pyaar aisa mila..."

Sung by the one and only Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar. You know the song, don't you? It is picturised on Amitabh Bachchan and Rakhee.

There were so many anecdotes like this in that CD. I did not feel sad about the passing away of Gulshan Bawra just because I was still listening to the recently-bought CD when I heard the news. It was very natural for me to feel sad in any case. Apart from Gulzar, Bawra was the last surviving Pancham lyricist. Both Majrooh and Anand Bakshi died a few years ago: pick out any R.D. Burman hit and it would be invariably written by either Majrooh or Anand Bakshi. But it was Gulshan Bawra who wrote the most youthful and hummable numbers for Pancham -- be it Khel Khel Main or Jawaani (remember Tu Rootha To Main Ro Doongi Sanam?) To tell you the truth, most of the R.D. songs that I truly like are the ones written by Gulshan Bawra: tell me S, can you beat the songs of Yeh Vaada Raha?

And yet, I did not write a post about Gulshan Bawra when he died, even though he is one of the pillars of my childhood as well as adolescence. Have I stopped feeling? I think so, S. Of late, there have been times when I want to write about something but then I let it be. You know something, there are at least 15 posts sitting as 'draft' on my blog that have not been posted. I start writing with great enthusiasm, and but after about 500 words, I ask myself: "Is it really worth it? Why should anyone be interested?" I save it as 'draft' in order to work on it the next evening, which never comes.

This was certainly not the case till about a year ago when I wrote whatever I felt like. These days, even provocations don't seem to work. The other day, a reader, perhaps a well-meaning one, asked me,

"You have given so much about yourself in this blog - including the sexual adventures. Whats your take on facing people in real life? I mean, you are not writing all these under some pseudonym. Is it a "I don't give a damn about what you think about me" attitude? Most people can't dream of writing like this under real name and going to office next day!"

I began writing a post in reply:

I don't know what is so scandalous about my writing that I should be ashamed of going to office the next day. My office happens to be a newspaper office, not a seminary or a monastery. If you go by the essence of what I write and not just the words I clothe my thoughts with, you could actually visualise me sitting in one corner of a giant, quite hall in a monastery, meditating upon life. Moreover, there is very little of me in my blog, leave alone my sexual adventures -- may be I need to return to my old posts.

Time was when this blog did not exist. What was there was a column I wrote for the paper -- my sole weapon then to claim my place under the sun. When I look back now, I realise that I wrote far more scandalous stuff in that column. Even today, when I happen to recall some of those pieces, I momentarily shut my eyes in embarrassment.


I wanted to write more, but after two paras I clicked on the 'Save as draft' button. I had run out out of patience as well as the urge to explain. I am what I am, I thought, why explain?

But S, am I really being what I am. I seem to have become a well-settled citizen of blogosphere who no longer feels the need to assert his existence by speaking out his mind. That's not my idea of life. At least I am aware that I am slipping into inertia. That way I am safe, because I also feel the need to get out of it. I will, someday soon. That's all for now.

Love,
BG

Calm

We sat on the balcony of the hotel, overlooking a vast expanse of darkness -- so dark that you couldn't tell where the sea ended and where the sky began. Just a solitary star up there. The waves came charging at the rocks with such force as if they were being sent ashore by the broom of a frustrated maid who was trying to empty the water from a flooded room; and the breeze so strong that the full bottle of Smirnoff on the table kept shaking. But right below the balcony, if you looked down, was the brightly-lit road were the weekend Pondicherry crowd milled around.

Soon we would join the crowd to find our way to Satsanga, the French restaurant. But presently it was time for a few drinks in order to be in good spirits by the time it was midnight and my wife's birthday. The most seductive thing about French Pondicherry is its calm: there was calm now, amid the crashing of the waves and the squeals of the holidaymakers, and there was calm then, when we walked down the maze of streets to look for Satsanga. And there was calm again, when we got back to the hotel and had one more drink in the balcony in the company of the waves; the crowd had gone. And then we went to bed, looking forward to yet another trip to calm -- a walk through the French streets early in the morning.

My eyes opened at six. Through the glass doors of my room I saw a deep orange streak running horizontally across the sky. And then the spectacle began unfolding: the orange gradually began to change the black of the sky into deep blue and soon a small reddish ball began emerging from the horizon. The world calls it sunrise.

It was a new day, also my wife's birthday, and also the birthday of Lord Ganesha, the God of new beginnings and the remover of obstacles. Too many coincidences, I thought. So I sat on the bed and let the rays of the sun fall on me. For me, they were messengers of a new beginning and a bright future. I felt good. And calm. At a time when you are desperately seeking peace and a place under the sun, nothing could have been more soothing than those rays.

Here's the sunrise, as seen through my camera:

The Mole

But one morning
during my visit to Sensitive Mounds
I lost my way.
Standing alone in the valley, amid
miles and miles of white velvety stretch.

I called her to ask for directions
She giggled and laughed and refused to tell
"You are experienced, you should know,
you come to the Mounds often
sometimes to write, sometimes to rest."

But this morning, my darling
I am drunk on lust. I am all alone
and there are millions of bumps
Have mercy and show me the way
At least tell me the nearest landmark.

I heard her blush and then giggle:
"Ok, take a left. There you will find a mole
from there go right and take a left again.
Confused? Ok, call me once you reach the mole
I shall guide you from there."

After a fulfilling morning at the Mounds
I thought of the mole: how foolish he is --
he is there to make the flawless flawed
but amid the velvety sands,
he is an oasis called the beauty spot.

The Search For Answers

She was 16 when she fell in love with him. He was a young Army officer who had just returned from Sri Lanka after fighting the LTTE. His palms were made of steel and his voice, when he sang, as silky as Hemant Kumar's. Which girl wouldn't fall for him? Their eyes had first met during Durga Puja, and then they began to meet. At first under the roadside tree outside the school, then in restaurants in the neighbourhood. And that summer, when the entire class went on an excursion to Bombay, he followed her. There they roamed Chowpatty, hand in hand. Holding hands was a big deal in 1987. It was the present-day equivalent of kissing. But unlike kissing, which only fuels your desire to explore further, hand-holding, at least back then, brought about a sense of contentment. The average couple knew that they had reached the maximum permissible limit, and that the rest would follow only once they got married.

She was 20 when she got married. She was still preparing for civil services exams. The groom was an engineer, a product of IIT Kanpur: a soft, intelligent, good-looking guy. Her parents had netted the prize catch after combing the matrimonial columns of the Times of India for months. She glowed on the night of her wedding. That year, she also got through the civil services exams. Engineer husband, bureaucrat wife: what a life. Two years later, she had her first child, a girl. And two years after that, a boy. Living in an old British-made bungalow, they lived happily ever after.

'Ever after' is a relative term; its periodicity can vary from five years to 50 years, but once you've cross the 20-year mark of living happily, you've lived happily every after. In their case, they've already crossed the 20-year mark. She is almost 40 now, he is 45. He is the vice-president of his company; she is the managing director of a government-run corporation (she has also published two slim books on poetry, and she blogs too. Though not many people who leave comments on her posts know her real identity. She blogs by the name of 'Sunaina', who describes herself on her profile page as 'I am what I am.') They no longer live in British-built bungalows, but in a bungalow of their own. One happy family: neighbours' pride, society's envy.

Then, one day, Orkut came knocking on the door. And the first person she searched for was -- of course -- the Army officer. She was in luck. Once an officer, always an officer: he looked just the same in his album on Orkut, only that he had greyed. But the salt-and-pepper hair made him even more desirable. Once she had had a good look at him, her eyes widening and narrowing alternately, she turned her attention on his wife. "Is she more attractive than me?" that was the first thought that escaped her mind. The thought was so loud that she could hear it. She at once felt jealous. She heard another thought escaping her mind: "This is my man, how could she have him!" Just then, the bell rang. The daughter had returned from her salsa class. She went to the kitchen and hurriedly made sandwiches for her daughter: her mind was on getting back to the computer as quickly as possible, just to look at the pictures all over again.

Four months have passed ever since she was reunited with her first love, courtesy Orkut. Today, Google Talk keeps the old love aflame. Really, only the internet can bring back dead things to life. And you know what the profile picture on her Google Talk shows these days? It shows a young man and a young woman standing next to each other, rather awkwardly. They want to get closer, perhaps put their arms around each other, but they are aware that the world -- at least the photographer -- is watching. The result is cute as well as disastrous: if I am ever asked to write a caption for the photograph, I would say, "So near, and yet so far." Well, this was the picture taken on Chowpatty, way back in 1987.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, this is not a short story that I am attempting to write, but a true story that has made me think. Though it can also made into a thought-provoking short story provided one has the skills. After seeing the Chowpatty picture on her Google Talk profile for several weeks, I asked her one day, "Aren't you going to change it? Or are you still in the nostalgia mode?" She replied, "What to do, I happened to love him so much." Now that made me think:

1. Should she forever curse life for having denied her her first love, or be thankful to life that she spent 20 blissful years while being married to a man who she did not choose but who not only gave her happiness and two beautiful children but also enough breathing space to write two books of poems?

2. Or is it that she is mistaking lust for love? When you are 40-plus, and your husband a few years older, the bed is the place where you only have arguments. Once upon a time the bed might have been a place where toes touched, but today it is the venue for pointing fingers. In other words, there is no sex, except whatever goes on in the mind. In such a situation, when a handsome visitor appears on the horizon, then... well. And if the visitor happens to be a blast from the past, then.. well. You know what I mean, don't you?

3. Does love retain its potency and its intoxicating properties as long as you don't achieve it? And lose its charm the moment you achieve it? I am asking this because, had Sunaina married the Army officer, wouldn't she have got bored of his constant presence after 20 years of marriage? Maybe she would have searched for other people on Orkut. Maybe she would have searched for me.

Please answer these questions for me, will you?

Keeping The Mask On

The image in my previous post is self-explanatory. I would be lying if I said I am not excited. But sadly, I am not going to go through the book, for the simple reason that I am always embarrassed -- and at times appalled -- to read anything that I've written a while ago. There is always this urge to rewrite. Others, however, are encouraged to buy the book and read it and, better still, reread it. It should be in the bookstores by the month-end.

I do not know how long its shelf life is going to be, but I certainly know that the shelf life of my excitement is going to be horribly short. As long as you are waiting for your book to be published -- after having travelled the length and breadth of the country and put your descriptive skills to test -- you are some sort of a hero in your own eyes. But once the book is published, the readers take over. If they like it, you remain a hero. If not, you are reduced to being a zero. I am already bracing myself to answer questions like these:

"Weren't you writing a book? What happened to it, is it out yet?"

"Yeah, it came out four months ago."

"Is it? How come I didn't notice! Where can I find a copy?"

Chai, Chai was written over a period of two years. During the first year, I did all the travelling, and during the second year, I did the writing. During these two years, what kept me going, in spite of the vicissitudes of life, was the knowledge that I was writing a book. An imaginary cover for the book -- which, fortunately, is not very different from the real cover that has been reproduced in the previous post -- and an imaginary reader reception kept me going. In other words, my life had a purpose during the past two years. There was something to look forward to. But once the book is out, what will I have to look forward to?

I decided not to take a chance. Last week, I signed a contract with the publishers for my next project. It will be a book on Chennai -- a portrait of the city I have been living in for the past nine years. It will be the most definitive book ever written about the city till date. That's all I can say for now. It will be released next August, to coincide with Madras Day celebrations in 2010. In other words, I get to keep the mask of self-importance on for another year.

Coming Soon

Cover design by Rishad Patel.