Ibrahim

I know, I know. The 100-posts-this-year resolution hasn't exactly started off well, has it? But it's not really my fault. There has been too much travelling happening lately for me to be able to sit down quietly and write. So here's a stop-gap. 

This is a story that I wrote in response to this challenge:

A man who lives alone sees a set of footprints leading away from his house the morning after a heavy snowfall.

The story had to be less than 750 words as well. Mine didn't make the cut, but I still quite like it. 

****

Ibrahim

Ibrahim wakes up every day, and hopes the food will be gone. Most days, it isn’t. He used to put out clothes too, sometimes. But the clothes always remained, even when the food was gone.

He closes his shop at eight every night. Of course, nobody really comes to the shop after seven these days, even when there’s no curfew on. But he likes to potter around behind the counter, tidying up, doing the accounts, postponing the inevitable. Then he walks slowly back to his cottage outside the main town.

He passes a military check-post on the way, one of many in this place. It’s usually bright with light and the bonhomie of young soldiers who haven’t seen blood yet. There’s as much happiness in that one small building as there is in the rest of the town put together.

The two soldiers on duty outside usually greet him. The soldiers know Ibrahim because they buy their cigarettes at his shop. He’s almost the only local they speak to.

He always returns their greetings. Some days, when the trade at the shop has been slow because of news of bombings nearby, he offers them some of the leftover snacks. He knows he should give the food to the orphanage, but he thinks of these snacks as insurance. Pay a monthly premium so they don’t shoot him for a terrorist at the end.

These soldiers are his son’s age, maybe a year or two younger. He wonders if they know about his son, if some tattle-tale in the town has whispered in their ears about the jihadi son of the shopkeeper. He wonders if his son’s photo and name are up on a board somewhere, labelled TERRORIST in bold red letters.

He doesn’t know whom to blame. Should he blame his dead wife, her mind unscrewed over long years by a long-ago night of blood and fire? Should he blame the local maulvi for pouring poison into the young boys’ ears in every class? Should he blame these soldiers for their very presence? Or should he blame himself for always being too busy at the shop to be with his son?

The closer he gets to his house, the slower he walks. Sometimes, he fantasizes about an alternate life, one in which his wife is alive and happy, and his son hasn’t run away to fight for a losing cause. He fantasizes that the house will be yellow and lit and noisy, waiting for him to arrive. His steps speed up in anticipation.

And then he turns the corner, and the house is dark and empty and quiet. He slows down again, walks heavily up to the gate. He unlatches the gate, walks up the narrow path to the front door. The house smells musty when he steps inside, but there’s nothing he can do about that. He fixes himself dinner, eats. Then he prepares the bundle of food, and puts it outside the back door.

Tonight, he smells snow in the air, maybe the ghost of a snowfall up in the mountains. He peers off into the darkness, at the hills hidden now in darkness. He thinks of his son, bundled up in a shawl, hugging his gun for warmth in a cave somewhere. He goes back inside, walks up to his bedroom, finds an old coat of his. He wraps the food in that.

In the morning, the food is gone, and so is the coat. It has snowed heavily in the night, and a set of footsteps lead away from the house, towards the forested hills behind. He looks at those footsteps, and feels something burst and start burning inside his chest.

He sits down heavily on the steps, cradles his head in his hand, stares at those footsteps. In a minute, he will get up and sweep those footsteps away. But for now, he stares at them, the only sign he has seen of his son in the last five years.

The February Resolution

The first time I sent in something I wrote for a competition was when I was eleven or twelve. The internet revolution was just beginning in India, and I had just discovered Class on the Web. The site had a lot of material related to my school syllabus, but I was more interested in the monthly 'Creative Writing' competitions they were conducting.

The first piece I sent in was a poem. The first paragraph went like this:

The little girl sat thinking,
With a heart fast sinking
"Oh, so much work to do!
But I want to watch cartoons!"

I guess it's probably a good thing I don't remember the rest. But don't judge me - I was eleven, okay?

Anyway, even though the poem was pretty bad, I won a prize. It was a whiteboard, a tiny book-sized one, and came with a blue pen. I never actually  used it though. Eventually, the ink in the pen just dried out from lack of use.

When my grandmother's eldest sister, a famous reader herself, learnt that I had won a 'writing' competition, she gave me a gift - a beautiful book, with a colourful cover and thick white ruled pages. She presumably wanted me to use it for all the brilliant verse I would no doubt now spew forth. But I couldn't bring myself to use the book, it was much too pristine. So it stayed empty. I don't know where it is now - I guess it must have gotten lost during the later shift to Delhi.

But strangely, despite that early encouragement, I've written very little since then. My friends talk about how they had articles published in newspapers when they were kids, but I never did any of that. Sure, English teachers loved to read my essays aloud in class. And sure, I've 'edited' a couple of magazines in my time. But that's about it.

This might seem funny to people who've been reading this blog for a long time. Yes, I've been blogging for eight years now, on and off. But the posts on this blog are pretty much all I wrote during those eight years.

I did a self-diagnosis last year. My problem, I decided, is that I don't like actually showing my writing to people who know me. The decision I made last year to start writing this blog under my own name was an attempt to correct this problem.

But it hasn't worked out. First of all, I wrote barely twenty posts last year. And secondly, I can see a clear difference (both in quality of writing and content) between the stuff I wrote under a pseudonym, and what I've written in the last one year under my own name.

And then last week, I learnt that I had won this. For those who can't be bothered clicking through, it's a short story competition, the second edition of one run by the Indian Women's Press Corps. The prize money is good - 25, 000 rupees. That lends it a certain weight in the eyes of people who can't really tell one competition from another.

But for me - it's not about the prize money at all. It's a sort of - vindication. YES, I'm a writer. Not an aspiring writer, not a wannabe writer. A WRITER. And that feels damn good.

I'm suddenly glad that I took a year off from work. No matter how the real reason for that break turns out, it allowed me to get back to my writing. I've been writing short stories. I've started work on a novel. I've been participating in short story competitions off and on.

Unfortunately, it's still tough for me to show my stories to people and get feedback from them. Even the short story that won - I didn't show it to anybody before sending it out. In fact, despite the win, I STILL haven't shared it with anybody, not even those closest to me. Especially those closest to me, I should say.

But I realize that if I want to do anything remotely serious with my writing, I need to start sharing it with people.

So here's a resolution. Since we're way past New Year's, I'll call this a February Resolution.

I will write at least one hundred posts on this blog this year. 

That's a post roughly every three days. That's going to be a bit of a challenge of course, considering the fact that I wrote hardly anything last year. So I'm going to allow myself to cheat a little.

1. I can post short stories, no matter how bad they are. Feedback would be much welcome.
2. The longer stories can be split into two, and those WILL count as two posts.
3. Once in a while, I can post inspiring/interesting clippings from books and blog posts, such as this one.
4. Travelogues count, too. And yes, they will obviously be split into multiple parts, because my travelogues are generally long.

So if you don't want to see a LOT of me in the next few months, unsubscribe from this blog NOW. And if you do want to read me, get ready for a bumpy ride!

Rowling's The Casual Vacancy

Despite all the negative reviews I'd read of The Casual Vacancy, I couldn't help approaching it with a sense of expectation. The opportunity to sink into a brand new world created by Rowling? Delicious.

And then I came back to Earth. This first 'adult' novel of Rowling's is as gritty and real as the first few Harry Potter books were magical and colourful.

The casual vacancy that the title refers to is a seat on the Parish Council of the village of Pagford. The vacancy (created by the death of Councillor Barry Fairbrother), and the election that follows it, is the excuse that Rowling uses to dive head-first into Pagford and its politics. The election soon turns into a vote on what Pagford is going to do about the Fields, a council housing estate on its edges. The middle-class citizens of Pagford think that the Fields are corrupting their areas and their kids, and want to remove it from Pagford's limits.

The book's greatest strength is its cast of memorable characters. Pagford's citizens - from its obese delicatessen owner to its schizophrenic school principal, from its Indian origin GP to its resident wife-beater - are all unique. And alongside and underneath the political currents flowing among Pagford's adult citizens, there is also the world of Pagford's adolescents. Surprisingly, their world turns out to be even darker than the adults' world.

If this book deserves to be remembered for something, it is for Krystal Weedon, the Fields-bred daughter of a drug addict and off-and-on prostitute. Not many readers will be able to dislodge Krystal Weedon from their minds very easily - her bravery, her devil-may-care attitude, her poignant attempt at love, and the many tragedies of her life.

Unfortunately, the characters are very poor compensation for the things that are wrong with this book.

First, Rowling's political inclinations show through too well. Somebody should tell Rowling that all her donations to charity (she was the first person to go off the billionaire list because of her 'charitable' nature) already make her political sympathies very clear. We don't require a five-hundred page garishly-covered book to tell us.

And secondly - the writing! Dear God. I can't believe I used to find her a good writer. I admit I haven't re-read Harry Potter in a long time, but I don't remember the writing being this bad. One of the basic rules of writing is that you keep the point-of-view the same throughout at least a particular passage or scene. But Rowling jumps around with her POV so much that the reader gets quite confused. One minute, we're listening to the thoughts of Colin the schizophrenic principal. And the next, we're on to his long-suffering wife.

Of course, rules are meant to be broken, especially in the art of writing. But in this book, the rule-breaking doesn't quite work. The only occasion it makes sense is when all of Pagford is attending Barry Fairbrother's funeral. The narrative jumps among the many people in the church, giving us their perspectives and thoughts and preoccupations.

Overall, the book is - clumsy. If I had to come up with a metaphor for this book, I would say it's a slice of bread with jam smeared on with too heavy a hand. The jam is tasty enough in itself, but too much of it makes the taste-buds revolt.

The Sanjay Story - Vinod Mehta

The cover is simple - black, with the title in yellow above, the author's name in white below, and a black-and-white photograph of Sanjay in the middle. His face looks familiar, maybe because of the similarity with Rajiv. Thick black sideburns, a receding hairline, a truculent mouth, uncertain eyes, that famous Indira nose. This, you think, is the man who terrorized one of the largest nations in the world for two whole years.

Vinod Mehta describes his 1978 book as one of a set of 'quickies' that came out in the months after the Emergency. The only difference being that while the others focused on the Emergency itself, he focused on Sanjay Gandhi, the so-called 'Extra Constitutional Authority' of Emergency times. Harper Collins has now re-published the book, with no changes apart from a 2012 Foreword by Mehta himself.

His focus on Sanjay was not unreasonable during that period. Sanjay may be largely forgotten today thanks to the succession of people with Gandhi surnames we have had to deal with since his death - Indira Gandhi herself, Rajiv Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi, Priyanka Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi, not to mention Maneka and Varun Gandhi. But during the Emergency, he was  seen as the force behind all the midnight knocks on the door, the forced sterilizations, the violent slum clearances.

Mehta sets out to write what he terms an 'objective' account of Sanjay. In truth, only the first two chapters seem even remotely sympathetic to him - they set out the strained relationship between Nehru and his wife, Feroze Gandhi's adulation of Kamala Nehru, his later courtship of and marriage to Indira, their estrangement. The young Sanjay is shown as a loner, though one who had an affinity for drawing the worst kind of boys and men to him.

Once the background is set, Mehta gets to the meat of the story. The next few chapters are devoted to each of the various unfortunate milestones of the Sanjay story - the setting up and bankruptcy of Maruti, Sanjay's takeover of the Youth Congress and conversion of it into a gunda gang, the mass sterilization program, his disastrous election campaign at Amethi. The tale is well-told - jaw-dropping, in fact, when you read about how much money both Sanjay and Rajiv made from Maruti during the initial years, when you learn that 14 million out of 104 million eligible couples in India were sterilized in exactly 270 days.

Mehta also provides a plausible explanation for the greatest mystery of the time - why Indira Gandhi decided to suspend the Emergency and hold elections. He says that she really thought she would win - despite the lack of press freedoms, the government actually functioned better during the Emergency. She thought people would respect that. Fortunately, it turned out the people of India knew better.

Apart from the Gandhi family, many familiar names find mention - Kamal Nath, Ambika Soni, Khushwant Singh, Navin Chawla. Kamal Nath is described as 'a voluble, loud lad who liked 'to throw his money around' and 'who failed two years in a row'.' Mehta also implies that Ambika Soni used her physical charms to climb to power. According to him, Khushwant Singh was a Sanjay apologist who unashamedly sang paeans to the young princeling, while Navin Chawla was a pliant officer who did whatever Sanjay wanted.

Mehta flounders a bit when he tries to analyze Sanjay's psychological makeup. Since Sanjay had very little education, he was a man who saw things in black and white - no subtle shades of grey for him. He didn't understand that issues could be complicated, with many rights and many wrongs. And then there's the eternal 'spoilt brat' explanation - his mother felt guilty about ignoring him as a child, and was very aware that he was a child of a broken marriage. So she could never say no to him.

The text seems to be unchanged from the 1978 edition. This lends it a poignant air, since the reader is aware that Sanjay died in a plane crash just two years later, leaving behind his young widow and a months-old son (who were eventually thrown out by his mother, and later joined the Opposition, etc etc).  However, the editors could have added a few explanations. The book refers informally to many people who were probably notorious at that point, but have cleverly hidden themselves amongst the pages of history now. 

Overall, the book is fast-paced, and reads almost like a political thriller. Mehta's prose is chatty and informal as usual, though he is very precise on his details.

Out Of Touch With Reality

I lost three whole weeks of my life.

It started out innocently enough. I even remember the time - it was about 1 PM on a Sunday. I was bored with the book I was reading, and I wandered over to the bookshelf. Lazily flipping through some of the dozens of books I've bought on past binges at Blossom's, my eyes fell on a line of fat books I had propped up on top, above eye level - books 4-10 of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. (Here's a post on my history with these books.)

I had made Nikhil buy them for me nearly three years ago (he's no good as far as birthday gifts are concerned - fortunately, I always know just what I need). But I had given up on the series a couple of books later - partly because I got too busy to read, but mostly because I had started to find Jordan's prose repetitive and irritating. As Sandeep said, "If Nynaeve pulls her braid in anger ONE more time, I'm going to pull my own hair out."

I randomly pulled out one of the books, and read the back cover. And before I knew it, I was hooked. I had pulled out book 6 - Lord of Chaos. It is a thousand pages of closely printed text, but I finished it in three days flat. And then it was so natural to just keep on going through the rest, all the way to Book 10.

Jordan's prose continues to grate at times. But the story he spins is so delicious that I have decided to forgive him. His world is vivid and colourful, and it's easy to sink in completely. I have spent entire days just reading reading reading, often having to remind myself to bathe and eat. In fact, I was so addicted I used to get up at five in the morning to read. And hence the lost three weeks. I don't know what Nikhil thought of me - going off into another world for entire hours at a time.

Some time in the middle of Book 10 (the worst of the series by far), I suddenly realized in a panic that I didn't have the rest of the books. And I was determined to finish it this time - my third attempt. I went to Blossom's and bought Book 11. But they had only first hand versions of Book 12 and Book 13, and I wasn't so addicted that I would spend that much money on what is at the end of the day a potboiler. Besides I had some time - Book 14 isn't going to be published till January.

So I decided to order them online. India Book Store - that wonderful, brilliant page - told me that Homeshop18 had Book 12 cheapest, and I ordered it. A week later, they informed me by mail that they had cancelled my order because they were out of stock. Grr! And they had the temerity to end the mail with, "We hope you have enjoyed shopping with us." Of course I did.

I finally ordered book 12 on GOSF day, ironically at almost the price I would have got it second hand. It took nine days to arrive, and I'm very thankful for those nine days. I feel like I've come back to the real world after a long time. Though my reading has suffered. I'm unable to concentrate for long periods, probably because I've been spoilt by Jordan. I've started five books during these nine days, and finished only one. And that one was a book of short stories.

Here are the books I've started, by the way. I'm going to finish The Sanjay Story - it's a fascinating account, though written before Sanjay Gandhi died - and plunge back into Jordan's world. Goodbye, Real World!

The Difference Between Youth and Maturity

Herman Hesse, in Gertrude:

I think one can draw quite a distinct division between youth and maturity. Youth ends when egotism does; maturity begins when one lives for others. That is what I mean. Young people have many pleasures and many sorrows, because they have only themselves to think of, so every wish and every notion assumes importance; every pleasure is tasted to the full but also every sorrow, and many who find that their wishes cannot be fulfilled, put an end immediately to their lives. That is being young. To most people, however, there comes a time when the situation changes, when they live more for others, not for any virtuous reasons, but quite naturally. A family is the reason with most people. One thinks less about oneself and one's wishes when one has a family. Others lose their egotism in a responsible position, in politics, in art or in science. Young people want to play; mature people want to work. A man does not marry just to have children, but if he has them they change him, and finally he sees that everything has happened just for them. That links up with the fact that young people like to talk about death but do not really think about it. It is just the other way round with old people. Life seems long to young people and they can therefore concentrate all their wishes and thoughts on themselves. Old people are conscious of an approaching end, and that everything one has and does solely for oneself finally falls short and lacks value. Therefore a man requires a different kind of continuity and faith; he does not work just for the worms. That is why one has a wife and children, business and responsibility, so that one knows for whom one endures the daily toil. In that respect your friend is quite right, a man is happier when he lives for others than when he lives just for himself, but old people should not make it out to be such an act of heroism, because it isn't one really. In any case, the most lively young people become the best old people, not those who pretend to be as wise as grandfathers while they are still at school. "

The Sunday Market at Bangalore

Photo Credit: Akash Bhattacharya

It took me almost four years in Bangalore to hear of the Sunday Market for the first time. I stumbled upon a reference in a blog post and googled it out, curious. Many had blogged about it, and all said the same thing -  a paradise for bargain hunters on the lookout for old stuff. The market apparently starts in BVK Iyengar Road, and extends all the way to the KR Market Bridge. 

And of course, Nikhil and I had to go. Nikhil's heart starts beating wildly at the thought of anything old, even if it would be better labeled 'rubbish' rather than 'antique'. And me - I'm a bargain hunter of renown, though I stop being one just before the actual bargaining has to start. 

Sunday dawned cold but sunny. The market starts at seven-thirty and goes on till dark, the blog posts said. We got there around nine-thirty. 

And found - nothing. No bustling street, no stalls, no bargain-hunters. 

Puzzled, we asked around, and were told that the market starts further down, not actually at the beginning of the road. So we walked on down, and soon enough, were rewarded with the distant sight of a busy market. Harried shoppers, wandering cows, loud vendors; autos threading their way through the crowd; the road paved over with straws and cow dung; the wares displayed on open tarpaulin sheets. The very air was different over the market - dim and dusty and yellow.

The market begins with the clothe stalls. Almost right away, we figured out that we weren't the target audience for these shops. Most of the clothes were so shabby we couldn't figure out if they were second-hand or not. There were also plenty of colourful blankets, jackets, kids' clothes and towels. I wouldn't have minded a second look at the jackets; they looked good, with nice colours and fur-lined hoods.

Next up are the stalls selling old hardware - gears and spanners and nuts and bolts and other things I can't even name, most of them rusted and with their edges worn out, but cheap. For some reason, many of these stalls had old dumbbells of all shapes and sizes and colours. 

There were plenty of stalls selling kitchenware - old appliances, steel utensils, plastic containers, aluminium vessels. Cheap electronics stalls were common too - everything from phones to memory cards. The place is a true heaven for a technophile, especially somebody who likes putting something together from old pieces.

Unfortunately, we reached the end of the market without seeing anything we wanted to buy. There were some brass articles of questionable provenance, which I spent some time examining. They would have cleaned up well, but we felt it was likely they were stolen.

Refusing to be discouraged, we decided to strike off on one of the side streets leading off the main road. Ignoring the stink and jumping across a large dirty puddle, we entered a shady lane with stalls selling a variety of electronic devices. We spotted everything from old mobile phones to card swiping machines to non-digital cameras. 

And then we spotted the clock. Nikhil had been wanting to buy an antique clock for some time, and had been scouring e-bay looking for one. And here it was. A tall black wind-up clock with a pendulum, covered by a hinged front panel of ugly plywood and glass. The front panel had stickers of a colourful Hanuman and an Om symbol. When we asked the seller the price, he put up two fingers. And we were so clueless we couldn't figure out if that meant two hundred or two thousand. Turned out he meant two hundred. But of course.

We spent some time examining the clock, figuring out the extent of repairs needed: the mechanism would have to be replaced, as would the front panel. But in the end, we decided not to buy it. Nikhil's problem was that the clock wasn't antique-y enough. My grandmother has the real version, and it's a huge heavy one, nothing like the cheap plywood contraption we were holding.

We also spotted some nice-looking wall lamps. When we start on the interiors phase of our flat, we're definitely coming back here to score some knock-offs. 

And that was it. We told each other we weren't part of the target group for this market, and walked back leisurely, stopping at random stalls, enjoying the sights and sounds, avoiding the wandering cows. 

So overall? The Sunday Market is worth a dekko, definitely. Don't go there hoping to find anything you want to buy. If you do find something, consider yourself lucky and hope that the damn thing works.