A Lamppost

Searching for a lamppost emitting sulphuric glow around midnight
With a friend.

As a dog would scamper around looking for a place to pee.

Not for the same purpose. But, to stand underneath sharing life experiences

And puff in peace.

******
Dedicated to a friend who finds it difficult to say No to any of my expressed or implied wish.

This is a hypothetical situation. I don’t advocate smoking, if you don’t believe me please read this.

Dignity in Death

There would be a Dignity in Death

That life would never have,

Silent, serene, calm as a grandpa's clock

That is unwound for ages

But, never loses its poise, composure or stature.

Stray Dogs

In hindsight every life threatening situation has something funny about it or it just leaves you with a smirk on your face because you survived it and it gives massage to your ego.

Well, I’d such an experience a few weeks back. People familiar with me maybe dying of boredom reading about or listening to my adventures on the battery operated wheelchair. So, this is basically for the uninitiated or the people who may have missed this story altogether.

It was a Sunday afternoon and on the whim I felt like catching up the latest release in the theatre nearby. Oddly, I was feeling super confident that today being a holiday I’ll reach the theatre without any hassle as the traffic on the road would be minimal and I’d cross the roads without any assistance.

My intuition was proven right as there wasn’t a soul on the road. So, I continued my jaunt till reaching the main junction - no traffic. Still, I looked left, then right, then left again (as they used to teach in school from a chapter about Road Safety) before crossing the road.

Having crossed the road, I was jubilant in my head and even imagined punching the air. The going was smooth till now. I was aware of the big auto rickshaw parked ahead and cautious that I should not bang it. Suddenly I heard a humming sound, it took me a few seconds to realise that it was actually a growl. My eyes started searching for the source of that, and there he was, under the auto, looking at me. My wheelchair automatically became dead slow, undecided whether to go ahead or to stop. In fact, there was a bunch of them taking their afternoon nap. Meanwhile, the growling had become barking and it was waking up others. The barking one had come out by now and taken his position on my left and others were following him and taking their positions as if they were going to have a pre-match huddle like cricketers around me.

I nearly started crying looking at the jaw of the leader of the pack barking ferociously, I’d see the sharpness of his teeth and wondered where he’d reach if he decided to pounce on me, shoulder, neck, face and even my head. Suddenly, the dialogue from Life of Pi “Animals don't think like we do! People who forget that get themselves killed. When you look into an animal's eyes, you are seeing your own emotions reflected back at you, and nothing else.” flashed through and I realised that crying won’t help, turned my chair to the right and ran for my life.

Yet I’d feel that a few of them were chasing me, barking at the top of their lungs and an old drunkard (who couldn’t even keep his Lungi in place) standing on the sidelines and telling me pedikalle mone, unnum chayilla (don’t be scared son, they won’t harm you).

Thankfully, a couple of bikes appeared (as if they were assigned to save my life) from nowhere honking and making noise, which made my chasers disperse in various directions and forget everything about me.

I stopped when I was safe distance away from the dogs. My thighs were shivering due to spasm and anxiety, which is risky as my balance on the chair is maintained by the stability of my legs on the footrest. If I lose that I may slip out of the seat very soon and then manoeuvring the chair would be impossible. So, my first thought was to take U turn and return home. But, facing those dogs again within minutes didn’t feel good and I’d already covered three-fourth of way to the theatre and it’d be such a waste of effort to return home without watching the movie.

***

I’d narrated this incident orally to my friend Velu, who was very encouraging in saying that my narration was so good that it kept haunting him for a couple of nights. So, I’ve burnt the proverbial midnight oil for a few nights to write it down for the wider world.

The Pain

Let the pain drown you to the depths

Depriving you of any oxygen

And let you be there in peace forever

Because bouncing back and going through cycle

Again and again is not much fun

Is it?

An Actor

You laugh on a semi-funny joke

As if it is the most hilarious you've heard in your life.

You hear to the complicated love story of a friend

And offer him constructive suggestions and fresh perspective.

Without letting anyone know how tormented your being is

Or how sunken your heart feels.

Either you're a great actor

Or you're hiding the symptoms

Of bi-polar disorder.

तेरी याद

रंज नही

गुस्सा नही

बस एक दर्द जो रोने से भी हल्का ना हो

और जो ख्वाइश जगाए एक और ज़िन्दगी जीने की

तेरे साथ

The Bridges of West Kochi

I’d first heard about The Bridges of Madison County from Barry Norman who used to review movies for BBC TV. Those days I’d just begun self-education about Hollywood films so I hardly knew who Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep were, but, I remembered the title as I felt it was important by the way Barry spoke about it and time and again mentioned the lead players (though I don’t remember what his opinion of this film was). Robert James Waller novel (from which the film is adapted) is one of the first e-books I read after getting a PC at home in early 2000s and saw the movie after learning to use the torrents and downloading films.

The film has stayed with me ever since. But, the real significance of it came to the fore when I got a camera and started thinking of projects to do with the new gadget. That was the time I started thinking about the bridges on this side of the town (obviously not the oft clicked and filmed Thoppumpady bridge). I talked about the project with my dad, auto wallah and cabbie friends, but it didn’t materialise and they all seemed to say unison “these places have filth flowing under them and the stench will be unbearable.”

Yet my dream of being like Robert Kincaid (the nomadic National Geographic photographer played by Eastwood in the film) did not go away. At last I told about the project to my ‘ever ready to help’ friend Raju, he too warned me about the stench factor, still he was game for the adventure. It was decided that we will cover the Kalvathy area in the first leg. “And, no need for an auto, we’ll reach there in 15-20 minutes walking and you can start clicking pictures on the way itself”, Raju’s wise words.

The fun part happened when we thought we’d covered 90% of the distance, we realised that we were heading towards Cherlai Kadavu instead of Kalvathy. “I’ve seen a bridge ahead and thought it was the same,” Raju said.

“I meant the one near the State Bank.”

“I think that is the other end and I don’t think that we can reach there walking.”

This in a way proved to blessing for us as we discovered an unexplored and virgin part of the town and it proved to be exotic in every sense of the term with bridges to be found at every few steps and life lulling around on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

A petty shop as we approach the bridge

From the centre

This is where the friends bond

Those friends put me on the footpath

A mansion across the bridge

They aren't amused

A place to worship across the bridge

Ranjith etta bless me

The sight on my Right side

What would the world be without The Mother?

And, of course Raju - My Friend. A 1000 Danks.

Wannabe Robert Kincaid telling bye until he visits another Bridge.

Vanishing Vocations

This is Mahesh doing something that is rarely seen these days. What is surprising is that I found him very close to my home and that too on a Sunday. I don't remember noticing him before and he said that he has been there for the last 18 years. And, when I asked him why he was working on a holiday he answered with a counter question to my friend Raju "Do you take him out like this regularly or is this a special occasion?" then realised very soon that it wasn't a good question to ask and sheepishly replied "I've promised to deliver this chair soon so I'm working today."

I feel I was lucky as  a child to see this equipment operated, kids loved the sound this machine made and used to love seeing the sparks fly when it worked. So, everything worth sharpening was brought out when the call Kathi murcha aakaan undo? was heard. This fellow refused to pause when I called chetta from behind gestured him to stop. So, no frontal pose. :(

I don’t know why I wrote this

Existing in a vacuum

devoid of love

wrenching the heart

desire at least a touch

that can sooth the soul.

Don’t know why or how I wrote this. I feared that such things have stopped coming to me. So, when the first line struck me in the early hours a couple of days back, I tried to keep it in focus until rest of the lines came up. Without thinking about mistakes, rhyming and such things I typed it directly in FB with forward slash between the lines and posted it. I even copy pasted it in twitter (surprisingly it is much less than 144 characters).

Hope it is all was worthwhile.

Colgate's about turn or is it turnaround?

I came across this Colgate Charcoal toothpaste ad yesterday or the day before… As I am an ads freak numerous thoughts crossed my mind in the 30 seconds while this ad was going on…

A new variant to fool people.

Next butt of joke like 'Kya aapke toothpaste mein namak hai?'

I remembered a couple of people who used to brush their teeth with a black tooth powder or real charcoal. Maybe they have launched this to capture that traditional market.

Charcoal face scrubs that the likes of Kohli, John Abraham and Saif Ali Khan sell.

But in the back of my mind something kept nagging, these are not the things, there is another connection. And, the creative visualisation of charcoal powder stayed with me.

Then Colgate tooth powder came in: charcoal is rough and can harm your teeth. So, switch to the white and smooth Colgate tooth powder with the Ring of Confidence.

I couldn't locate the video of that ad… But could find the transcript of the Ad from here.

Colgate Tooth Powder: Two versions of the tooth powder ad.

Version one: muscular country bumpkin is out in the yard, with his weights, in front of a couple of buffalo.

Bumpkin: Arrey Bhabhi, zara mera doodh-badaam aur koyla dena to! 

Bhabhi: Arrey wah, devarji, badan ke doodh-badaam, aur daaton ke liye koyla?! [Scene change, shows graphic of gums and teeth up close]

Voice-over: Khurdare padaarth daaton ki parakh kharaab kar sakte hain.... [Use Colgate Tooth Powder, blah blah blah]
 

This Ad was telecast nearly 25-30 years back on DD and Colgate may have forgotten about it or have they suddenly woken up to the quality of charcoal?

A Strange Place Other Than Earlobes

No, no... This isn’t a post about my fetish for earlobes (one of the softest and smoothest part of the body). In fact it is the title of anthology of corporeal poems by five contemporary poets that includes my good friend Binu Karunakaran. The book was formally launched on the 19th of this month at a function in the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014.

Here are a few pictures that I could click of the function:

Leena Manimekalai - the Chief Guest, a few moments spent together before the function

Dr. Sreelatha - one of the five poets featured in the book, giving a brief introduction of the book

Riyas Komu - initiating the proceedings

It takes mammoth effort to unravel a book

Ra Sh & Binu seem to be wondering if they will get a chance to speak

Meditating Riyas

Star of the Biennale & a fan

His moment did come

A sign of Arrival - Amol Palekar asking you to sign his copy of your book

You don't get Amol Palekar seated next to you everyday. So, just freeze the moment

Broken Lives

It does sound like the title of a typical South Asian novel where a kid or kids growing up in poor or middle class surroundings and their family migrates to the West to improve their living conditions. But, this is not my story or to put it more clearly the story I intend to write, I wish to write a story about the people who drift away, disappear or just vanish from your life leaving you to languish in the pain of separation.

Ah! This is turning out to be some kind of meta fiction where the author or the storyteller is a part of the story yet it is not an autobiographical tale. I even posted what I thought would be the first line of the story on my FB wall to an encouraging response of likes, comments and shares. But, as it happens with me every time the vague plot did not take a solid mould.

I feel that you need a totally vacant, painfully vacant mind for a story to take root and I don’t believe in the theory that you go on typing and the story would automatically happen.

PS: I tried to write this to see if the blur picture in my head getting any clearer and, more importantly I did not want this title to evaporate into oblivion from my head. 

A clichéd love story

A clichéd love story

Throbbing in my head

Though they didn't walk into the sunset

Hand in hand

And, carried the pain in their hearts

Throughout their lives

Need a writer with calibre

To make it sound

Unique and fresh.

Stream of consciousness

The thing that you’ll read below is an effort to revive my non-filmi writing (an informal new year resolution that I’d put a few hundred words on paper without really being bothered about the outcome), I doubt if you’ll gain anything by reading it. The purpose of putting it up here is to show off my pearly handwriting.

Writing using paper and a pen is a tedious business, not at all romantic as some people make it out to be. Yet I always imagine or dream of doing that. I envy people who can fill up pages while attending a press conference or sitting in a seminar, while I have to be alert and make an effort to remember everything that is being said. The cell phone or the tablet has been a boon for me as I can note down a few points or type out questions I wish to ask. Here also sometimes, I have to convince people that I am not engrossed in a video game or distracted by a sms or an email. 

There is one advantage of writing in a book for me and that is the fact that I am not distracted by a new notification in FB, or updates on twitter or a new email in the inbox. 

The other good thing about writing like this is the fact that it curbs my tendency to be overly dependent on online dictionary to check if the new word blinking in my head is apt in the context that I wish to use it. This is the first time I am trying to put something this long on paper after my student days. Once in a while I used to write letters to my friends after that, but, that too has stopped for a long time now.

The excitement of clicking a pro

Thulasi Kakkat, a friend and a photographer with The Hindu whom I met at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale last Saturday, he was there to cover Shashi Tharoor's visit. He got excited seeing a camera fixed on my wheelchair and wanted to check how he looked from my vantage point. So, here is the result:

The rest of the pictures are commonly seen in the social as well as mainstream media and mine are taken at weird angles . Still I am trying to get a few exclusive ones and put them here.

Leap of faith

While piecing your past together as if it was a jigsaw puzzle, you may come across a few pieces that are blank and don't fit anywhere or there would be a couple of colourful pieces that you wouldn't find the space for them to fit in.

You may be standing at a point and wondering how did I reach here? But, your mind refuses to budge even to share the memories of the journey. If it is a sad point you feel it is ok and try to start a new journey or start afresh. But, if it is a happy point people around would like to know about the journey and the only answer you can think of is “I don't know, it just happened”.

If you are attempting to tell a fictional story it is easier to be convincing as you gloss over a few facts and convey something like leap of faith, the person being at an happy point got lucky, and he/she may have worked hard. But, he/she was at the right place at the right time and got lucky.

In real life, what seems like a happy or successful point externally may be full of turmoil and turbulence internally. And, this success could be the outcome of the darkest period spent by the person in his/her life.

The challenge is to draw a picture of life juxtaposing all these without making it look messy or cringey (not sure if it is the right word). Most of the times I fail to do it.

A Blade of Grass

No widespread roots, shoots or even leaves.

No erect trunk or branches that can bear fruits.

No shrub can flourish in my shade.

Being just a blade of grass.

That can be crushed by a tiny feet.

No Looking Back by Shivani Gupta

My review of this book has appeared in the Jul - Sep 2014 issue of Success & Ability.

I have always felt lucky to be born disabled. No, it is not because of the privilege that I have been looked after by people from the time I was a baby till well into my forties as if I haven’t grown up, as some friends like to joke. But, it is because I have seen a few people (who are my friends now) becoming wheelchair-users in their prime, they all have been brave and somehow surmounted the ordeal. The latest addition in this list of friends is Shivani Gupta. I had heard a lot about her as an award-winning crusader for the disabled.

But, when I heard about a book on her life on the social media, I felt a little sceptical as we Indians are not good at saying it as it is in writing at least in writing. Yet, I got the book without being sure that I will ever finish reading it. And, to my surprise I was visualising the author’s life without knowing that I had started turning pages (though I was reading an ebook).

What happens when the dreams of a twenty-two year old girl’s dreams are crashed in a car accident. Obviously, the fact would take time to sink in, and, it would be a painfully slow. The realisation that your life has gone topsy turvy and things will not be back to normal ever again is hard hitting. You may find Shivani’s life story familiar to some extent, as it covers medical negligence and the lack of knowledge in the medical staff to deal with her case.

For me, the book really begins when Shivani starts describing things after the rehabilitation (meaning that she had accepted being a wheelchair user). She dwells on matters that we in India tend to brush under the carpet or gloss over. The family is believed to be sacrosanct here, especially if you are disabled they become your support system. Shivani tells us about the issues between her father and her helper about how to take best care of her that made her wish to get out of the protective umbrella of the family. She achieved this when she gets a job as a peer counsellor at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre (where she herself was treated) and she started living on the premises to avoid travelling from home to the centre on a daily basis. The space provided to her was far from comfortable, but, with dogged determination she survived there until she got apartment of her own in the vicinity.

There are more nuggets from her day to day life that endorse her determined outlook and her wish to make everything she went through worth its while.

The other thing that strikes you about Shivani is the audacity with which she talks about her relationship with Vikas, an occupational therapist whom she had met at her place of work. He was a much younger man full of life and passion for his work. He saw a hero in her and their relationship developed into something that would be a taboo even in this day and age. They got romantically involved and their courtship continued for many years before his parents agreed to their marriage. In between they did many interesting things like learning about inclusion and accessibility in foreign lands. Most importantly, they launched an accessibility consultancy and audit firm (not a NGO) AccessAbility, a pioneering thing in India.

But, as luck would have it Vikas lost his life just a few months after the marriage in a car accident. And, this book is Shivani’s tribute to him. In a way, writing this book helped in coming to terms with her loss. A word of caution to the people who read books to experience the flourish of language, this book is not for you as it is plain, simple and to the point.

As the final words, we can say that the book No Looking Back is more about the Art of Bouncing Back.

Don't Suffer

Let the silence in your soul prevail

if it is giving you peace.

And, if the chaos inside is choking you

just blurt out.

Don't suffer.

These lines are playing in my mind for the last few days in a formless way, I couldn't do anything better with them, so just put them down as they came. Maybe it is the result of reading too much about Robin Williams' death.

Sunday outing with Aadi - 1st instalment

Never realised that I live in such scenic surroundings

Piety: Removed footwear even while praying metres away from the temple

Nostalgia: Premier Padmini in a roadside workshop

Kerosene stoves & a puttu kutti

Aadi befriending his namesake with a metal body

A tempting signboard - Chembila Appam

I'm using my camera after a long time. Went out for a walk with Aadi (he pushing my wheelchair to be precise). We couldn't go very far as it was cloudy and we had to take shelter once as it rained. More info in the next instalment.