On Writing

Every story that needs to be told has already been told. And now we're telling the same things over and over again, in different words, in different colours.

Where do I fit in? Do I have a story to tell? Does anybody want to listen? My ideas are cliched, my tone amateurish. I read what I've written and wince at myself.

Yet I need to put words down. I get joy out of seeing them there, little black squiggles on white, little bits of my soul that I've squeezed out and lined up.

Maybe that's enough, at the end of the day. But not at the end of the life. Surely not?

Loneliness

Inspired by a couple of hours spent reading a book in the park today. Supposed to be fiction, but more a collection of impressions that a story. All characters are based on real people - complete strangers, except for a minor appearance by [drumroll please] me.

The park is cold today. The sky is dark overhead, no sunshine shining through the branches. I do my usual rounds, glad of the warm wool of my shawl, the silk of my salwar-kameez. Courting couples, a stern girl reading an orange book, gangs of boys, a family with a small muffled-up boy who smiles up at me.

I keep writing letters to you, letters I can't mail. I pile them up in my little wooden chest, one on top of the other, the older ones yellow and curling already. They keep me company these days.

There's an elderly man in a white kurta-pajama who comes every afternoon, accompanied by a teenaged boy. The boy holds the man's hand and walks him around the park a few times. The man's eyes are anxious, confused, scared. He doesn't know what's happening, why it's happening.

I've held on all this while because I thought it would be cowardice. But I'm tempted. Sometimes, I cross roads without looking either way. But always, somehow, I get to the other side. And I wonder why I did.

Sometimes I fantasize that I did die. Perhaps my body is lying on the blue road back there, streaming red blood onto the crevices. Perhaps it is only my soul, my spirit, that is walking on, unaware of the gathering people, the hushed voices. Any minute now, they'll come to take me to you. A golden chariot will land in the middle of the dirty road, and I'll ride away on it.

How does one know, anyway, when one is dead?

Cause and Effect

Two men met under a board at a station. It was early morning, and there was no train on the platform. The two men carried identical suitcases. They exchanged them without further ado.

No on saw them. A group of coolies stood nearby, but they were busy commenting on a girl. The girl went away soon after, and the coolies quietened down.

The first man went to a room in the station house and opened the suitcase. It contained, among other things, a set of freshly laundered clothes. He quickly changed. While he was changing, he heard the train chugging into the station slowly.

He spent some time praying. The babble of voices outside rose steadily.

He came out of the station house. Earlier, he had been an anonymous man in a checked shirt. Now he was an authoritative clipboard, and a dark jacket over a white shirt and trousers. A crowd of people converged on him, gesticulating, negotiating, pleading, arguing.

The unlucky ones got seats. The lucky ones went away, cursing the clipboard and the dark jacket.

The man suddenly realized that he had forgotten the suitcase. He went back inside the station house and got it. He tucked it safely under his seat. The train left the station with a final whistle.

The second man went back to his house and opened the suitcase. The suitcase contained money in thick wads. The man had not seen so much money in his life. He went to a nearby hospital and paid a bill. They finally released his daughter's body.

A while later, there was an explosion. Several bogies of a train fell off a bridge. Others hung down from the rails, and it was like a garland of bogies on the neck of the bridge. The river was a deep one, and it flowed on, unmindful.

Life

It's been raining for three continuous days in Bangalore. Lovely wet weather. The entire world is gray, it reminds me of foggy winter mornings in Delhi, waiting for the school bus and shivering in my short skirt. But now it's seven years later, and I'm waiting for the bus that will take me to office. I tweet from my phone about the song playing in my head. I think of how much my world has changed in seven years.

Inside the bus, it's too dark to read my Murakami. I settle back with headphones plugged in and the music on shuffle. The first song is Blue October's 18th Floor Balcony, which doesn't quite suit my mood. Skip. Next up is Norah Jones, and she is exactly, exactly right.

I open my eyes and stare out through the window at the Bangalore traffic. Honking motorists, construction work, wet orange mud by the side of the road. The proverbial traffic jams of Bangalore, made worse by the unceasing rain. I float above it all, uncaring. I'm inside my exclusive shell, and nothing can touch me here. The rain makes wet channels on the window, wiping away the dirt. I watch the water flow down and wish it was that easy to cleanse human souls of all the bad things we accumulate. Not just sins - attitudes, habits, resignation, blind acceptance.

Vellai Pookal. Ah, even better. Such a beautiful, comforting song. The very first strains make me happy.

A flyover is being constructed, and we get stuck at the junction. I can't see the sky, or anything remotely green. A monstrous pillar rises up high next to my window, drowning out light, sky, nature. At the base of these pillars, scattered all around, are iron rods and heavy machinery, rusted metal and concrete blocks. Holes gape open for no particular reason. It's a sea of heavy sticky brown mud, thankfully fenced off from the road. I close my eyes rather than have to look at such vileness.

Tum Ho Toh from Rock On. We move on from the junction, and enter the road that leads directly to office. The land is more open here. Fields on either side, waterlogged now and waiting for the sun. A solitary lake, fuller now than I've ever seen it. The gray sky, heavy and roiling with rain. Apartment buildings dot the horizon, and more are under construction. Soon, I'm sure they will even fill up the fields to build more of them. I hate apartment buildings.

The office is two minutes away. I sigh. I open my bag and take out the tag with my office ID card. I used to hate it so much, it was a sign of my selling out. But now I'm resigned to it. It's there around my neck, the whole day. I barely notice it. I put it on, and step out of the bus with the rest, heading in a straggly bunch to the office building.

Full Moon

Eight in the night, and the Fin folks and I are all alone on the floor. Today the rest of my own team has left early, for some reason. The music of choice today for the Fin guys is Enrique Inglesias. "You can take my breath away," the sweet Fin guy croaks gently. I hide my smile, because he's a sweet guy.

Outside, the office grounds resemble a resort. Bamboo groves and paths of rough stone; hidden lights and croaking frogs. It's so peaceful in the nights - partly the reason I prefer to leave at seven or eight rather than at six. I look up and almost trip over the pavement stones. It's a full moon night - or near enough as to make no difference. I stare at the moon for a full five seconds quietly. And then walk on, neck still craning to catch a glimpse of it behind me.

On nights like these, I think of XL. I think of the same moon rising over XL and I feel a strange sort of connection.

Full moons were always my favourite nights there. I would go for walks in the dead of the night, just to catch glimpses of the moon. Somehow, these nights more than any other used to remind me of how little time I had; how every day, every hour at that place was precious and should be enjoyed. At the same time, they were calming. I could sit back and relax and just watch the moon. Sometimes it was silver, sometimes it was golden, at other times it was almost a battle red. But always it was large, looming over the hostel terrace like some pre-historic God keeping an eye on his people.

And here in Bangalore? I only notice the moon on nights like these, when I'm coming out of the office in the night. Last month I noticed that it was a full moon when I went out to buy something, and took an extra round of the colony just to keep seeing it. And the month before, it was on MM's birthday, I remember. I came out of office talking to her on the phone, saw the moon and said, "Oh! It's a full moon!" And she said, "It is?" in that typical MM way. Of course, it turned out later that it was the day after or something.

I think I must have been a werewolf in a previous life. :)

Pazhassi Raja

If you're a true-blue Malayali, you have to be in one of two camps - the Mammootty camp or the Mohanlal camp. A minority might have sprung up recently claiming to like Dileep/Jayaram/Prithviraj, but I discount them. The Mammootty versus Mohanlal debate is too deeply entrenched in the blood of every Malayali.

Me, I'm a Mammootty fan through and through. I might like some of Mohanlal's earlier movies, but Mammootty has so much style, so much panache. I remember the exact moment I gave my heart to him. Anybody remember the movie The King? It featured Mammootty in the role of a dashing, rebellious District Collector, seemingly fighting all the crooked politicians on his own. Saying that it was not one of his best roles would be the understatement of the millennium. But "Wow!" thought my impressionable eight-year-old mind, and promptly surrendered itself.

And so, a decade and a half later, we come to Pazhassi Raja. I am no history buff, let me warn you at the outset - especially when it comes to Kerala. Before the movie was released, if you had asked me who Pazhassi Raja was, I would have probably guessed that he was a Tamil king from the seventh or eighth century. Obviously, I wouldn't have known that his real name was Kerala Varma Pazhassi Raja. Yup, that's how far my knowledge of history goes.

I went for Pazhassi Raja for three reasons. One, that it featured Mammootty, of course. That too, in a role that reminded me of Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha. (By the way, check out the two screenshots below. Almost wenty years between the two movies, but what has changed? Even the user ratings are the same!)



Secondly, because it seemed to offer a treat for the eyes, set as it is in Wayanad, in my opinion THE most beautiful region in Kerala. And thirdly, well - it's a must-watch for every Malayali this year, isn't it?

Trust me, Pazhassi Raja doesn't disappoint on any count. The movie offers everything - political intrigue, mesmerizing battles, an excellent cast, enough history for those interested. And yet it leaves you thirsting for more, wanting to find out more about this incredible man, the 'Lion of Kerala'. Mammootty holds back on the glamour and gives a restrained performance that is well worth applauding - especially in the later scenes in which Pazhassi is holed up in a makeshift camp in the mountains of Wayanad, injured and apparently losing the battle with the British.

But what I liked most was the fact that the film does not belong to Mammootty or Pazhassi Raja in any way. The entire cast pulls out incredible performances - especially Sarath Kumar as Edachena Kunkan Nair, the Commander of Pazhassi's armies. The last fight scene he features in and the aftermath - I had goosebumps, I tell you. I also liked Padmapriya's performance as Neeli, the gutsy leader of the Adivasi women fighting for Pazhassi Raja.

The battle scenes are to die for, no pun intended. Well, you can't call them battle scenes because Pazhassi seemed to believe in oliporu - I guess that would translate best as guerilla warfare. So you have the red-coats trotting complacently through the lush green forests of Wayanad, only to be beset from all sides by well-camouflaged Adivasis. Later on, there is also the excellently-shot pre-dawn storming of a fort, and the final battle on a hill-top. A few gruesome hangings also happen along the way.

A minor point is the length - at 200 minutes, it's easily the longest movie I've seen recently. But it is so good visually that there are very few scenes that I would want cut. I also found it strange that there were no Malayalam sub-titles for the English dialogue. Granted 100% literacy and all that, but are all Malayalis expected to be so well-versed with English as to understand British accents?

Oh, and I can't end without a note on the audience. They cheered everything, starting with the 'Special thanks to Mohanlal' legend to the first appearance of Mammootty (the two camps do have a few overlaps, please note) to the hanging of a British officer. It's so true that you may take a Malayali out of Kerala, but not Kerala out of a Malayali. No, not even at a 200-rupee-a-head screening at PVR at 8:30 PM. But Nikhil, with whom I watched the movie, was disappointed - he said the comments were much better at the eleven o'clock show at New Theatre in Trivandrum, where he watched the movie last Saturday. I suspect it was more about the show timings than anything else.

By the way, if you want to know more about the historical setting, you can read Nikhil's review of Pazhassi Raja here.

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