Monkeysoup

A Girl Called Battle

2011-11-29T17:22:00.000-08:00

Part II The Quiet Arrival of a Pearl

Before we fully descend into didactics regarding magic and metamorphoses, let us return to our heroine, Battle, who we left in the company of her grandfather. Over time, her grandfather, as the designated patriarch, grew weary of his family, whom he regarded as a bunch of louts made useless by leisure and a crippling sense of entitlement, but in Battle, he recognized a mutinous spirit. So as a last-hope maneuver to groom a capable heir, he insisted that Battle should shift residence and live with him.

Her grandfather arranged for a pick-up, late at night, to diffuse any fanfare and overwrought good-byes. While waiting for his car, Battle sat quietly and patiently in the parlor, cutting a small but formidable figure among the shadowy pile of trunks. She pressed smooth the hem of her frock and tugged on her coat, trying her best to suppress the sense of anticipation. After some time, she wandered to the front windows, disappearing among the heavy drapes and pressing her forehead against the cold glass. She eyed the desolate streets at night, her breath clouding the glass, fogging the lamplight and when she wiped it away in a single streak, there it was, waiting for her, as if summoned from from the sleight of her hand---her grandfather's sleek, black automobile.

Her grandfather's building, the tallest in the entire metropolis, emerged from the stunted scenery of stacked edifices like an imperious dark monolith, checkered in windows and tapered at the top as a means to comply with pesky zoning clauses preoccupied with the blockage of sunlight to the underlings below. Though most floors housed the various enterprises that kept the family coffers well-fed, her grandfather sanctioned the topmost floors for his own personal space. It was here, hidden in the geometric arrays of marble, glass, steel and all variants of gleaming surfaces, where he situated his secret study, the one place in the whole austere, over-polished spectacle where he could truly be himself. He shared this room with his granddaughter under sworn secrecy. No one, not even his late wife, knew of this special secret wing. Except for his architect, steward. And solicitor, of course.

Battle spent hours in the evening, in this very room, sitting in a dusty landscape of toppled books, peeling Chinoise wallpaper, bottled boats, unfurled maps, disemboweled toys from curiosity shops, animals skins and relics from extensive travel that her grandfather gently pillaged from natives through feigned comraderie. Her grandfather regarded this room as an education, a rare and real oppurtunity to undermine an upbringing intent on fashioning her into an accomplished lacy bauble and subsequently, unbeknownst to everyone else, he groomed her with a freer sense of destiny.

However, just as soon as could realize a certain emancipation for Battle, he fell ill. He spent his last days in a bed, pouting with a pipe in his mouth, which he refused to relinquish even when his forlorn physician occasionally pressed two fingers on his wrist while eyeing a pocketwatch. Lying in bed for a prolonged period of time, he found, much to his own amusement, that his room resembled a family tomb, with tall dark marble walls, vaulted ceiling, windows composed of large sheets of glass faceted against each other, overlooking the clouds, the sky, the oblivion beyond. It also did not help that the usual entourage of stolid spectators parked themselves by his bed, waiting for the inevitable cue for tears, the usual histrionics, and eventual inquiry regarding assets.

So while he did derive some temporary pleasure in using his illness to emotionally blackmail his family members, he was determined that his granddaughter did not become a part of the farcical moodpiece surrounding his demise. In an act that many chalked up to senility---though those who knew him, knew better---- he sanctioned the construction of a darkwood dory/miniature ship with old sails that his granddaughter could play in during the day and sleep in at night. He enjoyed seeing the people seated at his bedside, dressed in black, frowns on their face, stoically braving clouds of sawdust, hammering and drilling. The project helped dissipate the whole lot of them, so that finally, the only people left in the room were those that were absolutely necessary. And Battle. When the ship was completed, she dangled off the masts, looking beyond at the stretch of clouds from the windows with a telescope and wishing her ship could set sail, with her grandfather onboard, onto the welcoming sky of clouds.

From then on, everything that happened in Battle's life happened in the company of her bedridden grandfather: her lessons, her meals, her manufactured adventures on her ship. For a period of time, it was their own little paradise and it appeared that perhaps her grandfather may have warded off the grim predictions regarding his health. But one morning, he knew it was time. Last words were spoken, but the very last was left for his grandaughter. She was kept aside dutifully by his steward, until she was led to his bedside. For once, he had nothing to say to her, seeing all that he constructed and built left on her brave, little shoulders. He tirelessly made all necessary arrangements to ensure her future and finally, at this moment, he could lay his eyes on her, knowing that it was up to her what to make of these next chapters. He quietly placed the key to his secret study in her palm and slowly raised his arms for a final embrace. As he held her in his arms, she rested her face onto his frail chest, feeling it rising and falling, the muffled sound of his heartbeat beneath, until she felt it all collapse, with his last breath. It was then Battle, who had been so brave through the whole ordeal, who gladly played on the ship he made for her, finally let out a sob. And the tears would not cease. Not the day after, months after. Not a year after.

She refused to leave her grandfather's bedroom, even when his furniture was shifted away into storage. Eventually, her own furniture was moved into the room, while she continually cried, sitting in her nightgown at all times of the day, in her ship, under an over-sized chandelier. Her grandfather's old solicitor who was given the responsibility of over-seeing her upbringing and financial security made sure she had some level of education. So she'd be dressed, fed, and taught in her bedroom, which happened, even through a perpetual syncopation of whimpers and sobs. It almost became like breathing to her, and regarded as such by most who encountered her on a daily basis. The tears, though, functioned as a self-imposed shield by which to preserve the grief, that last moment with her grandfather, keep everyone and everything else away. It was, after all, the last time she really felt love.

One night, Battle slept in her ship, quietly sobbing, burying her face into the white pillows and sheets that glowed in the moonlight, when suddenly she felt something bounce off her quilt and roll onto her hand. It was a single radiant pearl, warm, iridescent and beautiful in the blue light of the night, when suddenly she stopped crying momentarily and her eyes trailed up the ripples of the sheets up to the side of the ship, where she saw the beady eyes of a little brown mouse, perched from the edge of the ship, its fur mangled, its little paws hovering below its face. For a moment, she almost felt she could speak to it, and it could speak to her in plain language, that it came to her bedside as if to comfort her; it understood her tears, her sobs; it understood her; however, realizing herself, her momentary bout of insanity and the inconcievable notion that this residence--this sanitized fortress sealed in marble, concrete, and steel, suspended so high in the sky--- could be suspectible to vermin, she let out a loud scream, that vibrated through the hallways and woke up the entire staff.

From the bottom of her door, she saw the lights darting below, growing brighter, the scurrying footsteps rushing towards the door. At that moment, she felt a cold hand on her own and looked at the mouse and realized, the mouse was not a mouse anymore but in fact a boy. A boy with light brown skin and soulful, jewel-green eyes, soot on his cheeks, shivering and frightened---it was Rust. He had turned himself into a mouse and her scream woke him up from his own self-imposed transformation. He pleaded with her, his hand on hers,"Please! Help! I mean no harm!"

Hearing the footsteps stop at the door, Battle motioned him to one of the long, large drapes by the window, "Hide there!" He slid behind them swiftly, just as the doors crashed open. Her grandfather's old butler stumbled at the entryway, halting an eager army of of maids in nightgowns and shawls, armed with lit candles. "Little Miss, whatever is wrong?"

Embarrassed and puzzled, she wiped away her wet cheeks and smiled, which alarmed the entire staff even more than her scream, as they regarded her perpetual stream of tears as a tiresome yet routine by that time. She assured them, "Oh I'm sorry. Just a bad dream."

"Anything we can do for you?"

"That'll do, " she insisted. The butler nodded, in slight disbelief, unsure of what to make of her suddenly docile, even cheerful behavior, and reluctantly closed the door. When she was sure they were gone, Battle whispered, "You can come out now." When she heard nothing, Battle quickly rushed behind the drapes in search of Rust but could not find him. She looked, wandering around her ship, peering in her wardrobe, lifting the lid of her jewelry box, crawling under tables, yet suddenly she noticed the secret entryway to her grandfather's study was ajar, letting out a cold draft. She walked up the old wooden staircase into the room that she did not have the courage to reenter after her grandfather passed away. The boy was nowhere to be found, but she rediscovered all the knick-knacks, the old books and maps, reentering memories so vivid that they ressurected an old sense of love, and just as her fingers traveled along these objects, she found a hole in the small glass window in the room---the only way by which the boy/mouse entered and escaped. She slipped her hand through the window, her fingers feeling the cold, thin air, wondering if that mouse-boy grew a pair of wings and flew away,yet half-expecting to feel him touch her hand once more, whisking her away into a starry sky, far away from this mythical tall tower inpenetrable to the rest of the world.

When she returned to bed, she found the pearl nestled in the soft, white sheets. It was likely dislodged from a disregarded piece of jewelry from her own collection, some little trinket she must've worn without thinking many times over, yet sitting in her palm, in the dark, it never looked lovelier.

A Girl Called Battle

2011-11-29T17:21:00.000-08:00

Part 1 Introduction

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Battle and a boy named Rust, two children destined to meet each other but were gifted with very different yet unusual circumstances. Battle, though an orphan, grew up among people of considerable wealth and oppurtunity. Despite an early inclination towards playful tantrums and kicking good times in mudpits, a committee of remote relatives silenced her to a vast schedule of lessons, forcing her to spend her days with a book balanced on her head while she gurgled french, ate with a salad fork, rode white horses, and played wronged virgins in lackluster balletic performances. She often cried in the evening for reasons largely unknown to herself, but she derived some pleasure reconstructing old war diaoramas in her grandfather's company while he sipped brandy, smoked his pipe and eyed his vast collection of photographs featuring fat Victorian beauties.

Rust literally grew up in the underground, in an abandoned loop of subway track where a large tribe of urban gypsies, proud heathens, and mystical vagabonds set up camp. His mother was a noted clairvoyant who made peculiar candles that could make or break the fortune of those who dared to light them. His father, despite an uncanny resemblance to Rasputin, had a successful career in vaudeville as an acrobat and comic, but he harbored a secret talent for transformation with the help of a magical tambourine. Very few ever witnessed the miracle. Rust himself never saw this particular trick, though he once caught an indirect glimpse of it, seeing his father's silhouette against a bonfire morph into beasts, bird, and curious pieces of furniture.

Needless to say, Rust grew up in an unusual neighborhood, full of communal festivities and obligatory freakshows. But sometimes, Rush would find himself in a nook near the surface, contemplating this familiar darkness in his life and wonder about the mountains and pasture, the soil from which the wicked herbs and mythical flowers grew, the very foliage and blooms that disingrated when they were submerged into his world, becoming merely a a wafting scent from an upside-down, dried bouquet. It was while he was pondering these very thoughts, one day, that the subway track rumbled, and the dust from obliterated cement rained from a sunlit crack above. And Rust gazed at this vision--this cloud of silt suspended in a slit of sunlight--as if it pulsated with magical possibility. For right above lived that other world he only knew briefly while at school or at the carnival, that strange land above where people regarded the sun not so much as a source of romance as much as regularity and routine.

It seems odd to most but it was perfectly normal to Rust, that he developed an ecstatic curiosity for the mundane. Soon after. he toiled over elaborate plans for expeditions. He scaled buildings, crawled through vents, swung on ropes, slid into dark corners just to glimpse a man sip brandy while engaging in stoic conversation over finances with his wife, witness a poor student smell a steaming pie before wielding an eager knife, admire a clerk finger through the crisp edges of paper files, and wonder at artful slosh of suds while a girl from the tennants tended to her laundry.

Rust could not feign invisibility flawlessly, however. Whether it be because of over-inquisitive neighbors or the serendiptous arrival of unsuspecting cops, reports of a peeping tom circulated throughout various neighborhoods.And even though they were uncommonly supportive of their son's hungry mind and strange inclinations, Rust's parents got particularly worried after an ugly incident involving brush with law enforcement and some angry dwellers armed with kitchen utensils, the entire intriguing chase culminating with a showdown on a tower and Rust dangling happily from the hour-hand of a large clock, sixty feet up in the air. Sternly, his father insisted," Due to the boy's inelegant method of mischief, he must be inititated into OUR special way of dealing with matters." So for his thirteenth birthday, both his mother and father recruited his Uncle Boris to give Rust a special present: his first spell.

A Mixed Bag of a Weekend

2011-11-29T17:04:00.000-08:00

To say I'm fond of the holidays is a a gross understatement. The Christmas of 2009 was a pivotal turning point, where my Grinch heart grew thrice its size ( and more importantly I was not on call), and I could fully indulge in real holiday revelry. For christmas, Kris and I sat in our apartment in NYC, singing carols, while he cooked turkey and fresh cranberry sauce. We walked on Christmas Eve night at 2 am to look at the holiday lights in the snow, eating chestnuts, and singing songs to Swiss and German tourists with kazoos. Then we had a little Xmas Tree and put up stockings, which Father Christmas filled. We saw plays: George Bernard Shaw, Our Town, Brief Encounter in Dumbo.

Last Christmas was magical because I was here with my fiancee and was married right before I left for India for my wedding. So it had its own little magic.

As for this Christmas, I've decided to embark on finishing an old short story I started at the end of medical school. I scrawled it on a sheet of paper back in 2005 and certain pivotal scenes in it unfolded before my eyes, but yet I could not quite connect the dots in a convincing fashion....until this year. Somehow working as hard as I do, spending late-night hours in the laboratory, it came to me, how it would pan out and more importantly how it would end.

So this Thanksgiving vacation, I went to the River MArket Antiques and collected ---for a lack of a better term--a crapload of Victorian and Art Deco postcards, paper dolls, and even an old French Edwardian magazine and an old art Deco women's magazine. From Spivey's, I bought an old Victorian boy's Holiday reader, full of such random, beautiful images---including a cradle-ship which was precisely a picture I was looking for the story. I also bought a copy of Little Lord Founterloy which also had some lovely, inspirational etchings.

My husband also most lovingly cooked all sorts of goodies: the most amazing, freshly made cranberry sauce I've ever tasted, roasted chicken, roasted potatoes, squash and sweet potatoes. He even cooked a variation of a Thai dish with quinoa instead of rice. We watched the most magical film Hugo ( a review of that later) and watched the inspired though flawed Muppets. We saw the lighting of the Plaza, and while some schoolkids tapdanced, we got OCCUPY-ied, which was sort of funny. I was like I hear ya---commercial Xmas is full of corporate greed, but let's not bitch about it while some kids flash some jazz hands at us.

Unfortunately, for me, I fell sick. But I finally finished the second part of my story: A Girl Called Battle.

2011: The year of revelations

2011-11-22T17:58:00.001-08:00

I know 2011 has been a big year for me. Over the days stumbling one after another, I acquired a husband, a nephew. And of course the joys of these changes in my life introduced me to nuances of love and basic human existence that is both expected but also eye-opening. But 2011 has also been a pivotal year in my life in another way.

I spent my childhood, loving stories and loving movies. Though there are moments of dramatic emotional peaks in my childhood unlike any other, as time went on, I sometimes wish real life could be as I imagined it, or even as Hollywood Studio imagined it, where everything is manufacted, beautiful and perfect, the swells of inspiration naturally augmented with a crescendo of orchestral chords. You know how it goes.

And then I forgot about how I used to think: that real life, as it pans out, will never be that movie, the feeling one gets reading a perfect passage of literature, such as the last page of the Great Gatsby, or any length of Shakespeare. This year, it returned to me, how I used to think like that, and it was apparent to me: that these manufactured manifestations of emotion, these conjured images can't compare to the real thing. And this was the year, more than any, where I had a multitude of absolutely perfect moments.

It's like that film Afterlife. Which I happened to watch late at night in Bombay the night before I left for Rajhisthan to get married. The people in this film live in limbo where a crew of people recreate a perfect moment in their life, their last flicker of life and memory, that resonates in a deep part of their soul, and single second in the time continuum, where they can reside in forever before embracing an unknown oblivion. And 2011 had many such moments for me. Moments that could never be captured with a picture, a song, a poem, a film recreation with a bombastic soundtrack but yet could linger perfectly as memory. Even while it happened, one second leading to another, fleeting before my eyes, I felt this transience and learned to relish that brief glimpse of pure happiness.

So I've decided to devote the rest of this magical year, 2011, to recalling these perfect moments. Here's a list.

1. My wedding

2. Alinea

3. Recreating Ferris Bueller's Day Off with my husband

4. Kiran and the book I made for Kiran

5. Cultural experiences: a. Frankenstein b. Queen at Play c. Hedgehog d.Lucky Star e. Midnight in Paris f. Jerusalum g. Alexander Mcqueen h. Sleep No More i. Fallen Idol

6. Acquisition of an Onyx Ring with Aditi

7. Hanging out with Lisa and Izzy and Cara in the antiques store.

8. Listening to Beirut's new album late at night in the laboratory

9. Listening to M83's new album late at night in the laboratory

10. Reading Just Kids in an airplane. Twice.

11. Discovering watching old Hindi films with my mother, while in bed, is a wonderful conversational experience

12. Discovering all the tedious work involved in research can reap real revelations

13. Denver, all of it. Teaching Juli how to say hard words, scaring Bola with grasshoppers, and snatching stars from the sky.

14. The Ren Fair!

15. Sitting with my husband, drinking down a fair share of Ramos Gin Fizz

16. My husband handing me a St. Germain spritzer and feeling I've tasted an enchanted garden

I've got my work cut out for me.

Fluidity and Purity.

2011-03-13T19:22:00.000-07:00

So post-call yesterday I watched this Film called "Water" for the first time. It took me so long to see the movie because that film and I have a history.

When I was in college was when "Fire" and "Earth" released. I recall finding both films right-in-heart but all-wrong-in-execution. At the beginning of a Partition film like "Earth," can anything be more heavy-handed than a child picking up a pieces of a broken plate and wondering aloud "Can a country break into two, too?" I wanted to bury my head in the ground at that point. With "Fire", I liked the idea of two disillusioned wives finding the love and gratification, that they could never find with their husbands, with each other but somehow the love, lust portrayed on film wasn't quite compelling and a bit over-simplified. So ultimately, I felt that in theory, Deepa Mehta's films were great, but in realty, not at all. On the merit of her stories having a certain ethnic rigor, I felt her films carried a heft and importance that it did not completely deserve.

In college, I had the pleasure of meeting the director herself which was probably, up until yesterday, my most meaningful encounter with her creative psyche. There was a reception at a nearby this South Asian professor's house, and when I arrived, I was shocked to see both D. Mehta and this professor, standing outside in jeans and Converse sneakers, their long, wiry, greying hair down, smoking cigarettes, like two punks outside of a Lower East Side gig, peppering their conversation with curse words,both in English and Hindi. I sat silently next to them, wondering, "Weren't these women supposed to be Aunties? "

( For those unaccustomed to Asian concept of Aunties, it refers to the middle aged women who uphold certain traditional values of the South Asian middle-class, wearing saris during functions, inquiring about the academic status/success of progeny---basically, the epitome of propriety). Needless to say, this was the first time my mind discovered the idea that you could still be a punk at the age of 50. Awesome.

Anyhow, knowing the woman yet being disappointed in her movies, I sort of kept a distance from her other works. I had heard good things about "Water" but chalked it up to the exotic appeal of ethnic lore. But it always haunted me that my cousin had said the ending of the film was amazing.

So yesterday, post-call, I caught my mother watching the beginning of the film and right away, I was quite taken in by the gorgeous cinematography. So tactile, so lovely. I wish Bollywood films could be that lush in texture, allowing the camera to marvel at the flicker of flames, shafts of light sifting through banyan trees, menacing puffs of smoke from a dirty old man, damp hair, the constant negotiation of women with their saris. And through that, I gradually fell into the story about an ashram of widows, the younger ones sent for prostitution to keep the community afloat. It was told through four perspectives: a young six year-old widow, a beautiful widow who is prostituted to men, a middle aged but intelligent widow who accepts the faith and ascetism implicit in her circumtances but struggles with the wrong-doings and superstition that her own religion endorses, and a young, idealistic Brahmin who falls in love with the beautiful widow.

The story is compelling and I won't get too much into the plot. The performances for all involved were amazing, especially that little girl and Seema Biswas, who manages to say so much with only her eyes ( she needs to be in more movies; if she was white, male and American, she'd be called the second coming of Brando). Lisa Ray exudes a quiet poise that only adds to her ethereal beauty. She wears barely any makeup, is draped only in white cloth, yet she hovers in the film as a spectre of tragic loveliness, a young woman still struggling with her lost girlhood.

But what resonated with me, in this film, was the matter-of-fact description of the widows, their lifestyle, and their abuse. The soap-box moments were muted to merely demonstration; the details spoke for themselves. At one point, the six year old girl asks, "Where do the widowers go?" And all the widows are aghast that she could ask such a question, knowing that men, who lose a spouse, have the luxury to move on. But in this beautiful, simple moment, Mehta writes a scene that does display the hypocricy that the women, themselves, reinforce. It is hard for me to believe I was born into religion that allowed this to happen, not too long ago and even today. As my father says, this pervasive level of abuse is not seen in Buddhism, not condoned in the Vedas, but in fact, came from the Sacrament of Manu. For that reason, his own mother, my grandmother, treated religion from a completely pragmatic way, but never believed in its superstition.

My mother, after the film, told my a lovely story about her side of the family. Apparently, when my great grandmother, my mother's father's mother, was on her death-bed, she begged for some chicken soup. Widows were, by tradition, kept to a diet of food without taste and spices and were told to only eat once a day. My mother mused it was so ironic that they were essentially prescribed a lifestyle that was actually healthy and likely prolonged their own life of misery. Anyhow, my maternal grandmother struggled within herself---should she allow her mother-in-law to break her fast that she kept for 40 plus years?

My great grandmother passed away without her chicken soup, but my maternal grandmother resolved after that day that no widow shall be denied. In fact when her own mother and friends were widowed, she took the iniative to not only feed them but feed them well.

I never met my maternal grandmother and I only spent little time with my paternal grandmother but I can't help thinking these women, in their own compelling ways, negotiated with tradition. And arrived at the same conclusion in the end.

That said, Brava, Deepa Mehta!

Love's alteration found.

2011-02-21T21:52:00.000-08:00

I recently married. The whole charade was wonderful and touching and joyous and everything I did not expect it to be, but it seems the last film that I would want to watch is one about two people, at different points in their lives: falling in and out of love.

Yes, the movie was Blue Valentine. When I first heard of this film, I thought, shit---a hipster's paradise. Brooklynite and art-house queen Michelle Williams methodacting love and hate with closet grafitti losangeleno warrior ( also known for his portrayal of a Jewish neo-Nazi) Ryan Gosling, with a title named after a Tom Waits album. And Grizzly Bear doing the soundtrack.

I hated the idea of it. It was irresistible.

So finally, despite a schedule stifled in academic tedium, I managed to swerve my Honda through the genteel Kansas City rush hour traffic and catch a show at the gorgeously cozy Glenwood Arts theater ( also with an ice cream parlor, manned by displaced videostore nerds, with flavors named after movies and charmingly sadistic childrens' books---Peppermints in the Parlor). Surprising for a Monday night, there was a crowd.

The film, itself, was insightful, beautiful, not quite as precious or prententious as I feared, with absolutely gorgeous cinematography ( done by half-Indian Andrij Parikh--yeah, a brutha!). There was some beautiful dialogue, that I later learned was improvised. I recall specifically a scene where Dean ( Gosling's character) is talking about love, about marriage, how men are probably more romantic than women----in that they resist the idea of love so much that when they succumb, it's a more complete surrender. Falling in love, but from a higher elevation. The way the romance unfolds is charming, between the tap-dancing, a ukelele, a bus ride, and a lost locket: it follows a familiar plot trajectory in an adoringly visceral way. The love scenes and kisses are also incredibly tactile, though the most graphic of the lot, is actually in the other story----their undoing. It's sad, complex, more tragic as we learn more of the story.

The second part of the story is unbearable. It takes place in a cheap motel tailored for lovemaking. The couple, trying to deal with the death of their dog and their crumbling relationship, buy booze and choose between themed rooms, geared towards fornication. They choose a futuristic setting, with no windows, just a rotating bed, a glow of blue lights and strategic mirrors. It's almost exposing the charade behind being in love, as if the laughs, flowers, chocolate, the high, the platitudes posing as poetry is just a ruse for something far more basic, necessary, something that will inevitably fade.

I am not entirely sure why, but I cannot say I loved the movie, and it may be because it didn't fully realize itself or because I had a baseline irritation with the film's characters (Why does Dean drink and act stubborn? Why is Cindy no fun anymore?). Can the complacency born from that sort of selfless bliss really rot that badly?

Or maybe I know this love story from own life. And I see it unfolding in another person's life. All this may mean that my discomfort and even disappointment with the film is an intended effect. I struggle to articulate why. But the fact I woke up the next morning and felt the need to discuss it with myself, with my guy, with my friends---it probably speaks to the relative success of the movie.

Or maybe I'm just a sucker for a lovestory with a ukelele.

And I wanted it to end happily.

2010-04-12T18:08:00.000-07:00

This will be a short post. Like many, I've been planning on some regularity in writing, and haven't lived up to the agenda, but I'm trying to learn from others in my life, who manage multiple blogs with an adorable level of discipline, and just write ( Insert Nike logo, with perhaps a quill?).

Surprisingly the one thing that is keeping me afloat in my withering sense of enclosure is my plan to perhaps move out of my parents abode, somehow construct some semblance of a social life in Kansas City ---from scratch ( I'm willing to try out some pointers), and start rediscovering myself beyond the unwieldy tedium of work....

I think the social life, however, is key. Though I'm in such a state of inertia, my idea of new friends are people who'd like to watch British Sitcoms on PBS Friday night with me.

See, I need help.

Boy Story #1: Monkeys Engaging in Music

2009-08-14T23:47:00.001-07:00

So there is this boy in my life, and as far as I can tell, he shall forever be a boy, in the best way possible. He may be a former physicist- turned -neuroscientist, who manages to do work, while surfing for baseball statistics and listening to old Britney Spears singles (Anybody else aware of her song "Email my heart"?)

Anyhow, today, this boy proposed to start a family-style band in the vein of the Jonas Brother phenomenon, with his yet-unborn son and a stuffed monkey who occupies his time, that he affectionately refers to Monkey T. Monkey (yes, it's surprising but this boy went to a good school--actually, Harvard, but then everyone makes mistakes, right?). The band is to be called Cavalcade of Awesome and will cover thinly-veiled Disney song knock-offs. Like the "Oval of Life."

Yes, again: I date this guy.

But before this un-born son surfaces and his stuffed monkey comes to life in a Pinnochio-esque fashion (I'm presuming after the boy wails "When you wish Upon a Celestial Body"), you must unfortunately hold off on the celebration of mediocre music and settle for these select songs.

Track 1: "Heart and Soul" Gone Beethoven.

Track 2: "Jai Ho" (yes, poor thing can't do the Indian, but it still is catchy.)

Track 3: As promised, Email My Heart. The interweb stalker love anthem. A heartfelt plea from a former stalkee.

Track 4: "Girls Like You." His magnum opus. Yes, he wrote it himself. It's the top 40 song that you haven't heard but wish you did.

Enjoy.

A Debutante's Ghetto.

2009-07-26T16:22:00.001-07:00

So, of course, having developed my own disturbed microcosm of self-pity, medical knowledge, Walter Mitty movie dreams and idle bliss, I only found out yesterday that Dash Snow died, almost two weeks ago, at the age of 27.

It seems odd, but the first word that came to mind was :"Blimey!" ( It's partly due to a father who adopted a British-ism or two. Everything was "bloody" this and "bloody" that.) Yes, I am aware of my poseur-istic tendencies.

But then it might be somewhat appropriate to falsely adopt another culture's slang in reference to Dash Snow. When I first read about him, it was showcase the up-and-coming talent of the New York art world, who by the time of publication, already escalated into the welcoming sphere of the Establishment. Ah, but that's the rub: they were already of a product of it. Every single artist in that article came from privilege, including Dash--who chose to relinquish his truly aristocratic pedigree and become a boy of the streets. But what gets me is that his background---all their privileged backgrounds---sucks the revolutionary nature of the aesthetic revolution that they preach.

It's just disturbing to think about a young man, who has been handed everything on silver platter, who has been rewarded for any inclination or even thought, to suddenly roll up his elbow-patched, designer blazer and wield a spray-can. The worst part is that he knows how to exploit it, how to cracks that piece of cement by peddling it as high art. Because what is one man's outlet to a dupe a system that has made a habit of undermining him is another man's way of perpetuating the evil cycle in the first place.

Now I'll get off my soapbox, and pay my respects.

RIP DASH.

Battered with a good helping of butter.

2009-07-25T18:02:00.000-07:00

Dearest whatever stranger happens upon this remote piece of cyberspace,

Well, the move happened and probably is still evolving. I transferred myself, more than bruised from the bustle and vacant wasteland of glorified suburbia known as Los Angeles, and into my old playground known as Kansas City. The decision to rewind back to an awkward adolescence and deal with an altered power-struggle with the parents has generally been a bit controversial. The person who didn't make a peep through it all, however, was Kris. In his typical, deceptively laid back style, he shrugged it off, just lamenting the fact the distance between us is now bridged with a slightly more extensive flight and definitely not with a 6 hour car drive down the Californian coast.

Anyhow, the adjustment was a little difficult, what with a full surgery schedule and an apartment that was emptied and a mother going slightly crazy. I didn't say goodbye to anyone as I just didn't have the time, and even today, slight PTSD dreams seep through, only for me to wake up in a panic and realize that I'm thankfully no longer cheap labor.

Gradually, with the past few weeks, everything is unfolding. I created a makeshift study in the attic near the HD television ( yeah, real productive), but it overlooks the trees and the Bishop's house. My former kitchen table and my old lamp now are tucked away with my brass horse and a little ledge that I've turned into a bookshelf. Among my books, you can find Dean Young, Creasy, old moleskins, and a nice large bottle of Black Label that gathers dust as a bookend. So do not worry, I am still relatively temperate ( though the half a bottle of moscato that I downed a month ago provided me with a memorably warm feeling that overpowered the desolation of being overworked.)

I merely have ventured back into this dusty bit of territory(the blog, the attic, the Midwest) because I hope to resurrect a part of me that eternally struggles with my growing profession, a part that enjoys ruminating about everything and nothing while strolling through a tree-lined street, that craves to spend one day of the week just painting, scribbling, typing and gradually uncovering a muddled voice that is longing to hit that one impossible, perfect note. Loudly and unapologetically.

So wish me luck.

Resurrection of the Previous Blog, POST 1

2009-07-25T18:01:00.001-07:00

Salutations, ALL!
Hi everybody. I have ample time as a fourth year medical student to indulge my thoughts and commit it to the blogging bandwagon. I actually chose this site, despite its dearth of interesting layouts, because it is more accessible to my near and dear ones. Futhermore, I was on the phone with Barbara who regaled me with the diary entries that my friends created while cavorting through the romantic roselit streets of paris and I suddenly decided these crazy entries require a BLOG. So when I get my requested photocopy of these most bizarre yet hilarious documents, this blog shall serve its true purpose. In the meantime, I am in the process of mentally prepping myself for making a complete fool of myself in bollywood drag to a scant audience in a gym. The whole number ends with an interpretational dance scene with me giving birth to Josh while Mustapha sits in a meditative position and recites random words like ” TRUST” “ORTOLANI” and “LYUBA.”

Actually what this site really needs is a copy of the outline of the French epic I plan on writing based on my own life and my brush with the guillotine.

dm

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 3rd, 2005 at 9:40 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. Edit this entry.

One Response to “Salutations, ALL!”
Ginseng Girl Says:
March 3rd, 2005 at 10:03 am edit
oh dear devika of mines,

why you so torment me, you almost guillotine? please dears don’t die, if you die, i down poison like leo the romeo.

you like leo i remembers, so long time, for you, i will be romeo, tight pants, shirts with laces, i dress anyways you wish.

please live and we can be so happy together, i make you favorite foods every night. and be leos all day.

just thinking.....

2008-04-19T14:39:00.001-07:00

So I just had a thought that there are some things that you never want to forget about people who leave you. The way they said your name, their smile and twinkle in their eye, the way they shake a hand at you, and blurt out "Humbug!"
Just a thought.

a girl named Battle.

2007-12-21T18:16:00.000-08:00

Introduction.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Battle and a boy named Rust, two children destined to meet each other but were gifted with very different yet unusual circumstances. Battle grew up in a tall building full of people of considerable wealth and oppurtunity. Despite an early inclination towards playful tantrums and kicking good times in mudpits, her parents silenced her to a vast schedule of lessons, forcing her to spend her days with a book balanced on her head while she gurgled french, ate with a salad fork, rode white horses, and played wronged virgins in lackluster balletic performances. She often cried in the evening for reasons largely unknown to herself, but she derived some pleasure in watching old war footage in her grandfather's secret study where he sipped brandy, smoked his forbidden pipe and eyed his vast collection of photographs featuring fat Victorian beauties.

Rust literally grew up in the underground, in an abandoned loop of subway track where a large tribe of
urban gypsies and mystical vagabonds set up camp. His mother was a noted clairvoyant who made peculiar candles that could make or break the fortune of those who dared to light them. His father, despite an uncanny resemblance to Rasputin, had a successful career in vaudeville as an acrobat and comic, but he harbored a secret talent for transformation with the help of a magical tambourine. Very few ever witnessed the miracle. Rust himself never saw this particular trick, though he once caught an indirect glimpse of it, seeing his father's silhouette against a bonfire morph into beasts, bird, and curious pieces of furniture.

Needless to say, Rust grew up in an unusual neighborhood, full of communal festivities and spontaneous chanting. But sometimes, Rush would find himself in a nook near the surface, contemplating this familiar darkness in his life and wonder about the mountains and pasture, the soil from which the wicked herbs and mythical flowers grew, the very foliage and blooms that disingrated when they were submerged into his world, becoming merely a familar smell by a boiling cauldron, a wafting scent from a dried bouquet. It was while he was pondering these very thoughts, one day, that the subway track rumbled, and the dust from obliterated cement rained from a sunlit crack above. And Rust gazed at this vision--this cloud of silt suspended in a slit of sunlight--as if it pulsated with magical possibility. For right above lived that other world he only knew briefly while at school or at the carnival, that strange land above where people regarded the sun not so much as a source of romance as much as regularity and routine.

It seems odd to most but it was perfectly normal to Rust, that he developed an ecstatic curiosity for the mundane. Soon after. he toiled over elaborate plans for expeditions. He scaled buildings, crawled through vents, swung on ropes, slid into dark corners just to glimpse a man sip brandy while engaging in stoic conversation over finances with his wife, witness a poor student smell a steaming pie before wielding an eager knife, admire a clerk finger through the crisp edges of paper files, and wonder at a maid using a broom just for sweeping--not flying.

Rust could not feign invisibility flawlessly, however. Whether it be because of over-inquisitive neighbors or the serendiptous arrival or unsuspecting cops, reports of a peeping tom circulated throughout various neighborhoods.
And even though they were uncommonly supportive of their son's hungry mind and strange inclinations, Rust's parents got particularly worried after an ugly incident involving brush with the feds and some angry dwellers with pitchforks, the entire intriguing chase culminating with a showdown on a skyscraper and Rust dangling happily from the hour-hand of a large clock, sixty feet up in the air. Sternly, his father insisted," Due to the boy's inelegant method of mischief, he must be inititated into OUR special way of dealing with matters." So for his thirteenth birthday, both his mother and father recruited his Uncle Boris to give Rust a special present: his first spell.

Meena Kumari

2007-12-15T15:55:00.000-08:00

( This is a short story I wrote in Bombay to help my idiotic cousin with a nonexistent script, but I basically took an idea that we collectively developed and infused it with things I saw, felt, smelt. And the poem and the inspiration largely comes from my friend Aditi. She's an artist with talent busting at the seams. Check out her stuff. It's brilliant.)
----------

He considered possibilities, arriving at one conclusion: the blue cement building near Marine Drive with an altar of plastic flower and red light at the front desk. It had no name, just a reputation, a bring-your-own-whore philosophy, not that he considered her that sort of girl. He’d eyed her for a couple of months, nothing serious, an intermittent feeling of lusty helplessness ignited by the sheen of her bare shoulders. He blamed it on the dim lighting. But that night, she changed her mind, and he got lucky. He walked over, fed her the usual lines, which fortunately led to some discreet groping and a tacit understanding that all suggestions and promises of greater things to come could be realized at another place later that night.

That’s how he ended up in that room, sitting on a bed under a flickering light bulb, half-enjoying the distant longing of a playback singer from an old radio. From the window, he stood and watched people walking in and leaving, tidying their saris, zipping up their pants, and he wondered about those ladies that hovered in the lounge. He felt it too, that twinge, when that fleshy woman in a fluorescent sari with tinsel borders, threw him a wilted flower from her hair; after some time, thinking about the girl and that woman, his finger tracing that same floral iron grid on the window, he listened more carefully to that same wailing radio voice made sonorous through a veil of quiet heat.

The night seemed endless, and she hadn’t come yet.

So after toying with some frustration, a single-word text message (“coming?), and two phone calls with no voicemail left (though he practiced what he would say many times in his head), he left the room, without checking out, fearless, lost, and starving.

Everything in his head and that hotel bristled with illicit activity, but the streets felt abandoned. He walked, hearing the pulsating trance n’ techno from some of the bars, loud boys from a terrace party, and the drunken laughter of a girl. He smiled to himself and thought what his father would think at a moment like that: Meena Kumari. He thought of the fluorescence of film light flashing on her face, her languid sorrow, that thick kohl around her eyes. He liked those old film actresses. He’d sometimes imagine them in size 4 jeans and skimpy tops, their voluminous buns unraveled----you know, dressed like the way girls dressed these days in the movies, doing the usual thrust and shake moves. He actually wasn’t sure if it’d be hot.

Around the Gateway of India, there were more people, more of a scene, with jet-lagged tourists and police, lounging beggars, some oddballs peddling sham souvenirs and old produce. His uncle, being an itinerant poet, philosopher was also a nostalgic veteran to this scene, Bombay at 3 am or has had put it, “the last vestige of sinners ready to make the most of what was left of the night.” After lines like those, that reeked of eloquence and a British education, his uncle would often laugh and attribute such epiphanies to the alcohol and insomnia. One had to wondered in what brothel or bar right now would he find his uncle, but he knew the old man was probably at home, alone, with his vodka and Limca, waxing poetic elegies to his lost wife with his exhausted servant.

After some mindless strolling, he found a man selling chaat and raw mango in a stall made of red paint and wooden planks, a single rope of strung marigold and green light festooned between two posts. He went over, mentally equating the pile of green mangoes to a mountain range, and when he arrived, pausing to figure out what he wanted, he first heard her voice.

“You ordering or what?” He wondered why he hadn’t seen her there before, but she stood two steps behind, camouflaged in black, wearing a large shawl, her long black Kali-esque hair cascading down, curly and shaggy, the large glare of her over-sized glasses partly obscuring her face. But he could discern something palpable, imagining his fingers sliding behind her neck, sweeping off her mangled tresses and getting a good look at her face, her complexion.

“What do you want?” he asked her, smirking. “It’ll be on me.”
“Just order, I’m in no mood.”
“Panipuri.”
“Ek bhel, please.”

The vendor took a moment, his small, black eyes first settling on her shifting to him and then back to her; it was a confused trajectory; he couldn’t figure out whether to link them together or not. She chimed in, “Separate, please.” She looked determined and miffed, though not entirely unhappy, but he considered the exchange and wondered if the two of them—the vendor and this girl with glasses--- all could see through him, automatically presuming he had one thing on his mind, which irritated him, because they were right.

She sat on the sidewalk, not caring about the spit or debris, dried piss and dust, and ate her bhel from the newspaper with relief. He took the tin dish and swallowed the first puri, the masala water spilling down his chin, softening his stubble. He smiled at her with his dripping face; she rolled her eyes. She then took a bite of her bhel, most of it falling on her chest. He laughed, and she brushed it off, disappointed.

“You were hungry” he smiled, before swallowing another puri.
“I had Hajmola for dinner.”
“Why?”
“Long story”, she shrugged. “What’s yours?”
“What?”
“Your story,” she said. He considered lying to her, talking it down, maybe playing himself out to be more responsible, like he’s been working or was at a business outing, but he just didn’t care at the point. “I was at a party, met this girl, got a room …”
“Those hotels of a certain reputation?”
“Yes,” he said, matter-of-factly. “And she didn’t come. I got bored and hungry, and now I’m here talking to you.” He swallowed down another puri. She paused, considering what he said, “What was her name?”
“I forgot. I mean, it doesn’t matter.”
“Why the confession? You could’ve just said you were at a party.”
“Yeah but that wouldn’t have answered your question. Not really.”
“Do you still have the room?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re still optimistic.”
“I don’t know.”
“You are, and I should start off by saying, it’s not going to happen. I’m not that kind of girl. Just know right now, that I’m not going back to your room.”
“Listen, I wasn’t thinking that.”
“Really not at all? I don’t believe you.”
“Not seriously, at least.”
“Why, what’s wrong with me?”
“Bloody hell, what are you getting at?”

She took a bite of her bhel, looked at him and the vendor before continuing.

“I’m locked out” she started. “I live in one of those uptight hostels for women only, run by a former nun who’s obviously not done much since dumping the way of God. I went back and there was no watchman. Only a locked gate.”
“What about a hotel room?”
“Why bother. The sunrise is an hour or two away, and I can later say I survived my first night in Bombay homeless.”
“You’re new here?”
“What of it?”
“Any family here?”
“Not really.”
“So you have any plans?” he asked.
“I’m unemployed at the moment, but I got some leads. I’m considering being part bourgeois, part proletariat. You know, a job for money and a job for the people. Day job and night job. With the day job, I have a friend who’s starting some magazine. I’ll write for him, this and that. As for my night job, maybe I should ask this guy if he has an opening.”
“Are you serious?”
“Sure, I don’t know. I actually have fewer answers than I let on. So, what about you?” He entertained the ambiguity of her inquiry, thinking about his family and his current happy wasteland of leisure. At this point, he sat next to her, without her reading too much into it. And truth be told, he didn’t mean anything by it.
“I do nothing. All day.”
“Nice.”
“You probably think I’m professionally and socially useless. But I will be doing something. One day. I have to because it’s expected of me.”
“It’ll do you good. I can tell.”
“So you have me pegged?”
“Oh sure. Your type. Very common in Bombay. And Delhi, too. You know what I’m talking about. The posh, entitled industrialist’s son, a Cathedralite--- and spare me the denial, please. In fact, you didn’t have to make that little confession earlier. I could smell your hormones through your big brand cologne. You probably bathe in it. What is it, anyway? CK1, Hugo Boss?”
“What do you have against my type any way? It’s not like you’re poor.”
“You didn’t answer me, what do you wear?”
“Why do you care?”
She raised an eyebrow, flirtatiously, “ It smells nice.”
“ Carthusia, Fiori di Capri.”
“Never heard of it.”
“ It’s a spritzer made by monks in Capri.”
“Even better, something you can only get if you can afford to go to Italy every year, though you must enjoy the irony that guys that aren’t getting any are helping you to get some.”
“See, you think you know me, but you don’t, because you’re wrong right there. I’m not getting any. If I was, I wouldn’t be here talking to you.” She tossed her newspapers, wiping her hands, her legs stretched out, bouncing up and down as if they were wading in a pool of water. She conceded, “You’re right.” He got a sense that she must be twenty, give or take a couple of years, but he couldn’t help imagining her on either end of the spectrum as either a little brat with pigtails, or a cantankerous old grandmother, someone who’s either not lived enough or has lived long enough to lack any sense of propriety.

“What’s your name?” He slid it in quickly, aware of the awkward timing, but he couldn’t help himself. He knew she’d erupt again.
“Remember, nothing is happening as far as we are concerned”
“Chill.”
“Fine,” she smiled mischievously; her voice hushed and lowered, “What do you want it to be?” He sighed, “Very funny. I honestly meant nothing by any of this. In fact, I’ll be the bigger person and offer my name: Sid.”
She offered her hand, “Nice to meet you, Sid.”
“And your name, again?”
“I’m having more fun not telling you.”
“What’s the big deal?”
“You have to earn it.”
“Okay, fine, as one of your first friends in Bombay, let me offer some selfless hospitality and ask if I can walk you back to your hostel and see if I can figure out a way to get you back in?”
“It’s just a locked gate. And I’m in no mood to scream and throw pebbles.”
“If you know anything about rich duffers like myself, you’d know we’re quite enterprising when it comes to mischief. We’ve bunked classes and lied behind everyone’s back and if I’m still in the game, I can say that I’ve been pretty successful in duping the Establishment. You seem like the type of person who’d appreciate that.” They paid the vendor and started, and she frowned, kicking a pebble, “ I stand corrected. I may know your type, but what the hell? You have me completely pegged.”

Moving away from the streets, they ambled along the cement walls, plastered with posters for Pepsi, the face of regional film hero sporting an over-voluptuous moustache, and Ayurvedic soap ad with milk-skinned maidens bathing in Ganges-like water. Within fifteen minutes, they arrived at the large stone and iron gate, crowned with the usual tangle of barbed wire. Behind it stood a large shadowy bungalow, no lights, shuttered windows, a behemoth of fortressed virginity.

“This is a challenge.”
“I told you.”
“But not hopeless.” He pointed to a large banyan tree, a trunk with an encouraging splay of branches, all interweaved with dangling vines and roots. He offered some schemes and came up plans involving crawling on this or that branch, sliding up and down various roots and vines, and the intimidating possibility of jumping onto the roof. She sulked, “I’m just not that acrobatic.”
“Come, I’ll help you.”

He grabbed branch, walking up the trunk, eventually propping himself up, then offering her a hand. She took it, clumsily hurling her body towards the branch, slipping, awkwardly repositioning herself, trying a couple more times, before she threw her arms in the air. “That’s it. I’ve had enough. No more climbing”

She straightened her glasses, brushing off her hair. He hovered above, among the twisted wood and vines; he assured her once more that it wouldn’t take much to climb over, but she insisted that he come down. The city felt strange within the tree, the buildings levitating, the shadows looming, the leaves animated; he lingered for a moment before he jumped down.

“You know, I used to think I was a banyan,” she began, as they both stood under the tree. “When I was very little.”
“Why a banyan tree?”
“Oh not for any complicated reason; it was my favorite tree.”
“I imagine you as something more floral. Gul Mohir, maybe”
“Why do you say that?”
“Actually, I take it back. You’re pukka banyan.” She shoved him, “You’re just pulling my leg.” They stood under the tree, forgetting their purpose, enjoying the orange glow of the streetlamp through the canopy of leaves. He picked a leaf, twirling it in his hand.
“What about me? What tree would I be?”
“That’s easy. You’d be a weed, you know, a very promiscuous sort of plant.” She laughed hysterically, slapping his arm. He enjoyed the way she admired her own wit.

“It’s funny, though,” she sighed. “When we’re little, it’s always about favorites. And really, it has so little to do with us, who we really are. It’s not so much what we like, but why we like it. Honestly, I don’t think there is anything insightful about me liking a banyan tree. It’s big, beautiful, and full of mythological potential. But really, who wouldn’t enjoy that about a tree?” She stared up into the branches, “It’s a pity we couldn’t have spent the night up there. It might’ve been nice.”

Even while walking away from the hostel, he thought about that, the idea of living in a tree. He used to think about that as a child, imagining a world of large trees taking over the city, sprouting through the ground, crumbling buildings, large chunks of brick tumbling, glass bursting, and all the people picking a branch, sitting next to green parrots and shaking hands with monkeys. But now he had a different vision, a bizarre, hilarious one of the two of them in that single tree in the city, perched on a branch and probably falling asleep until they both fell and died, their bodies at the gate of the hostel, the shocked nun mistaking them for anguished lovers with romantically-inclined, suicidal tendencies.

“I have a proposition, but not the kind you think.”
“What?” she moaned.
“Why don’t we spend the next hour in my place? Lie down there for an hour until you know this woman will open the gate. It’s not even ten minutes from here.”
“No hanky-panky, remember…”
“You’re not that kind of girl.”
She smiled, shaking her head approvingly, “Chalo.”

She waddled by him, the night finally wearing on her, until they reached the building, the red light and profusion of plastic petals at the front desk still unrelenting. Her eyes widened looking at the spectacle of this hotel, feeling the suspicious gaze of the overworked females who hovered near its gates. She whispered in his ear, “My god, do they think I’m one of them?”
“Of course they do. Now be a good girl and don’t stare.”
“Come, let’s invite one up with us. We can pay her to dance and pretend we’re zamindars with hookahs.”
“They’re not that kind of kept woman, stupid,” he smiled. He, though, liked the idea of these women slinking around in their saris in a semi-coy fashion to some filmi song, while the two of them jokingly threw money at her, but it also depressed him, now that their faces—over the course of the night---had become familiar. His uncle returned to his thoughts, no longer slurring platitudes of love but sleeping, passed out in an empty room, his vodka bottle empty.

The room was untouched, the same soiled striped mattress, a paper pink lantern suspended by the window, that same mind-fucking floral grid now looking beautiful, filtering the outside fluorescence, projecting lotus petals on the tiled floor. He switched on the light, lotus petals vanishing, and she skipped around, suppressing her laughter, admiring the small details in the room that thinly veiled the charade involved in what she kept on referring to as “commercial copulation.” But when she disappeared in the bathroom, she was gone for a long time. At first, he thought nothing of the silence, at some level enjoying it, thinking she was doing whatever it is all females do when left alone with a mirror, but after a while, he wandered over to the doorway, wondering what was happening. “Everything okay in there?” In a little corner of rust, cement, and brown water, she huddled below the sink, touching the wall. “Look at this.” Below the sink, on that same cement wall, someone etched some graffiti, in neat, deliberate letters: THERE IS A MIRROR THAT HAS SEEN ME FOR THE LAST TIME, THERE IS A DOOR I HAVE SHUT UNTIL THE END OF THE WORLD. Someone had taken the time to write this, perhaps spending some lost hours in the night with tools, maybe even after a paid, though glorious, session with some whore.

“Interesting,” he said. “This must be someone’s enlightened idea of toilet reading. How in the world did you find this?”
“I just did.”
“Yeah, it’s strange to think an encounter with one of those women inspired this sort of introspection.”
“You never know, “ she murmured. “Maybe it was one of those women. Maybe they wrote it. Prostitution and poetry go hand-in-hand. Remember Umrao Jaan?”
“If they knew how to write that, they wouldn’t be downstairs.”
“I bet a million people have been in this room and this goes undiscovered.”
“Which makes the few times that it is discovered all the more special.” That was the only thing he said that broke her stare. She looked away for a moment, briefly smiling at him, before turning back to the wall. He looked at the letters again, all etched in English, so carefully, so strangely.
“It must’ve taken a good amount of time and planning to put this on the wall,” he laughed. “ I bet this is the only room in all of Bombay where one could find this.”

She ignored him.

“Borges,” she whispered.“ I used to know this poem, very well. Not in the way you memorize a poem for school, but it inhabited my life, once upon a time, and I knew it like a mantra. How did that stanza go? ‘There is a line of Verlaine I should not recall again, there is a nearby street forbidden to my step, there is a mirror that has seen me for the last time, there is a door I have shut until the end of the world….” She fumbled through the lines, her hand waving up and down, as she stared at the floor, struggling to uncover what she used to know. When she arrived at that line on the wall, it felt like an old friend to him, but she couldn’t recall the last line right after it, the line that she insisted made the entire mesh of words into one complete moment.

“It’s tragic that I can’t remember it. It will come back to me, “ she said, her finger passing over each scratched-in letter. “ But how funny that this poem would be in this room, tonight, as if a part of my past returned to me when I’m now ready for a change. Still, you have to wonder about the story behind this, the person who took the time to write this, and what happened after.” She stopped, her eyes tracing each word and letter in her head, taking in each silent syllable. “Whoever it was, whatever it was, it’s must’ve been something.”

Suddenly, she heard a song, outside, one of those old familiar songs. She walked slowly to the window, gently pushing the curtain aside, following the melody to the bluish glow of a television, in another window across the street. And there she was again, the second time tonight, a jewel in her hair and kohl in her eyes, Meena Kumari.

“Strange,” he said aloud, but she didn’t ask for an explanation, her eyes fixated on that screen, that room, where a man sat in front of that television, asleep, mouth open, his arms resting on his large protuberant belly, ignorant of the glowing apparition before him. When he looked at her again, ready to point a finger at that man, he stopped, noticing that through her mangled hair, a tear fell down her cheek, her eyes behind those large glasses trembling. He gently swept her hair away from her face, but she withdrew, looking away from him, “ I’m in a strange city; of course I’ll cry.” For the first time that night, it became apparent that through all the banter and small revelations, she hadn’t shared anything of herself, not really, and here she stood, finally exposed in that foreign room, unable to contain whatever it is that she felt and thought, yet looking more and more like an enigma. He stood by her for a good minute, letting her face disappear into the shadows, before he drew her into his shoulder and held her, letting her bury her sobs against his chest.

He didn’t know at what point the night transitioned into the day, when the women discard their saris, toss off their jewels, the neon signs flicker off and the streetlamps succumb to daylight. At some point in the morning, they fell asleep on that mattress, both sitting up, her shoulder resting against his, and at some point, she woke up, probably bleary-eyed, tossing her shawl back on her shoulder. Maybe she hated herself for crying or finding herself on that bed with him, or maybe she didn’t know what to do about that night at all, spending a moment to look at his face, asleep, just wondering. Something happened that morning while he slept; something led her to that piece of paper and pen so she could scrawl that line of poetry that she couldn’t remember: “Among the books in my library (I have them before me) /There are some I shall never reopen.”

She stapled it to his jacket, so when he woke up, it would be there, attached to him, right on his chest. If she hadn’t left that for him, the whole memory of that night –the banyan tree, the song, that feeling of her hair under his chin--would’ve gradually faded as he got into his car, drove home, and forgot himself to the general rumblings of the day, and if she hadn’t recovered that lost line of poetry, he would’ve mistaken it all for something it wasn’t.

In the land of diaroamas, I experienced a bout of romantic vertigo.

2007-10-24T14:29:00.000-07:00

The header says it all. It seems inevitable, after having watched a film like Vertigo that is so steeped in the city of Golden Gate, that you enter San Francisco and think of Hitchcock's technicolor. That really hadn't been the intention at all, when Nishant and I finally decided to make the long-awaited pre-birthday visitation to the Bay Area, with its former tenants always going on and on about its fog-awashed splendour, cafes around the corner, parks with weed smoke still fresh from the 1960s, and muses with ivy painted across their faces.

Sadly for us, there was no mysterious veil of fog. Just more good weather. How eternally pleasant and boring. But I have to say, much like the blonde size 2 babes who populate So Cal, California, weather-wise, is very bipolar: alongside its promise of sunshine resplendent eternal spring, it gives you landslides and fire storms.

Again, I digress.

So, Nishant and I planned on seeing the Joseph Cornell show at the SF Moma which quite inconveniently forgot to tour New York and Los Angeles. So, we trekked up to San Francisco merely for an art exhibit. And I guess, my birthday. But with the promise of a partial weekend in a new City, we decided to fully indulge in our roles as pedestrians with a covert longing to be tourists. On Saturday Afternoon, we arrived and walked to the Castro, where I found an adorable bookstore where I rebought a copy of Topper and two fairy tale books. Nishant threatened to capture obscure moments of beauty in its wake with a Polaroid. There was one shot of a pink town house with splay of bare tree branches in front of it against a twilit blue sky. Nishant insisted the Polaroid camera wouldn't do it justice. Spoilsport.

I did visit The Castro, which has now become my favorite movie theater that I've never seen a movie in. I asked the man at the door collecting tickets if I could just take a peak. I walked in, completely in awe of the cream-colored walls, the golden embellishments, the Max Parrish-like maidens painted on the walls. A single figure stood at the center, below the large screen, playing on the organ tunes like "Louie, Louie" and "Take me Out the Ballgame." Anyhow, every year, the first weekend of July, the Castro has a silent movie festival that I plan on attending in 2008.

San Francisco is as friendly as people say it is. Nishant seemed to make so many friends there, even this old Indian uncle, sitting with his daughter, on the trolley who inquired on the nature of our trip....and relationship, but very sweetly. We found a lovely teahouse, where we ordered chai, that was pretty good given it was made by firungees but , of course, served in uber-AMERICAN portions. They gave us each a vat of chai enough to serve a village back in the Motherland!

But the ultimate highlight of the trip was the actual exhibit that we travelled all the way up the Californian coast for: Jospeh Cornell. I walked, amazed and bewildered that I'd never realized that I could be so inspired by an artist who could be so daring without ever saying "fuck you" to the establishment and canon. While walking through the exhibit, I wrote down phrases that I saw or popped in my head while examining each beautiful diorama or collage.

So here's what I culled from the mindscape of the master:
1. radiant salamanders
2. diaramas butterflies
3. orange starlit field
4. NYC= splintering maze of glittering crystal
5. nude ship with petrified maiden
6. napoleonic cockatoo
7. extracting the human countenance from the prism of silver light
8. an uninterrupted series of exceptions
9. Nebula the Powdered Sugared Princess
10. Come Live with Me with Hedi Lamarr
11. retained crystal clear fragments of tableaux
12. "observed in her visage"
13. custodian of pets
14. lee waves in the atmosphere
15. penny arcade
16. got her job cinched
17. chimney sweepers' relic
18. doll habitat
19. saddest phase in this catastrophe
20. snowflakes in the sea
21. jewelry box of icecubes
22. white birch canoe

Joseph Cornell lived a simple life on Utopia Parkway. Art students who made the pilgrimage to his house apparently were rewarded with him sitting them down, talking to them, sending them home humbly with a piece that he toiled over, for free. It seems, judging from my own experience to his exhibit, even in the afterlife, he's up to the same shenanigans.

Exhibition and Voyeurism: monkeysoupindulgence#1

2007-09-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

So I've been on quite a roll with this blogbanter. BUT today, I wondered to myself: when I press that publish button, does anyone but my immediate circle of confidantes (nishant--maybe my brother) actually take an interest in this forum? It doesn't make a difference either way, because if there is anybody I do write this blog for--besides Nishant who laments the absence of a dumb bestselling book in my resume more than my mother---it's me in the future, at a time in my life I can look back objectively at my self-indulgent entries, roll my eyes, and think myself stupid. Plus, any such curiosity can open that usual can of worms about art and spectator and why we choose to express ourselves, blahblahblah.

But if there is a semi-normal stranger who, while googling misunderstood indian cuisine or a simian fetish, happened upon this remote piece of nonsense, let yourself be known. Maybe a comment or two will spur conversation, keep the entries coming. You might get a new bit of rubbish with every meal, like a little cyber-appetizer, though let's not get ahead of ourselves. If you are out there ( think:cave-like echo into a dark abyss), speak up.

Consider yourself a laxative to my unrelenting narrative.
dm

Chet Baker and Heat.

2007-09-02T18:41:00.000-07:00

That has been my day today. Sitting in a swelter worthy of matter, almost hanging like a heavy veil full of every type of subtext, while I lie on my bed, rendered helpless to its weight. I do have my computer, though. I have a half-read set of books scattered on my bare mattress: a weathered dud avocado, a half open on beauty, a sketchbook, a scrawled-in moleskin, a towel, my black comfortner, and a Busby Berkley DVD---yes, it's a wonderland of literate curio. Prior to succumbing to this mandmade-island-of-a-bare-mattress, I walked today in the unrelenting sunshine that hovers over the southern part of California. Though it wasn't ironically garish and bright while being actually temperate--which is usually the case; this time, the sunshine was armed with real heat. From a stroll, I came back to my studio drenched in sweat.

During my brief afternoon excursion, I took solace in the AC in a the three dollar movie theater. I saw a film called Rocket Science that was well written but unfortunately, it stylistically borrowed too heavily from Rushmore. Though, to the movie's credit, it did take me back to a more miserable time in my adolescence when I participated on the debate team. I similarly struggled to understand the point of all this hurried banter with policies nobody really cared about. I changed to oratory and enjoyed more success with that. At least I could write and say whatever introspective mumbo-jumbo I wanted at whatever speed I preferred.

After the film, I went and drank some dissapointing watermelon juice.

And now I sit here listening to Chet Baker and thinking of a pastiche of 1950s cool: beatniks, bongos and a twilit saxophone, children playing by a fire hydrant gone amok, Rear Window , the drizzle from the array of ACs while walking a manhattan block, sleeping on the roof, the silhouette of laundry hung on a yadrside jungle gym. I'm currently half-dressed, feeling my body gradually melt, seeking some focal solace in my little fans. I do enjoy fans. A breeze with a buzz that warps your exhausted whispers in a chopped blur of syllables. It's quite the invention.

Anyhow, while walking amidst the overabundant floral boughs found on an LA driveway, I found the summery scent of cut grass and blossoms overpowered by the heat-endorsed stench of urine and shit, which confirmed my suspcion that it's a universal truth. Refuse trumps all. It gives you a lot to think about on your way home.

Spiritual Brick.

2007-09-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

When you are well-fed on novels, you romanticize architecture as grand metaphor for the soul and nonsense like that. I know, it's so 18th Century English literature. And in my case, unfortunately, I've never had the ability to fully indulge in its possibilities, being a bit of a nomad, having been transplanted between upstate new york, kansas, long island, manhattan, and now los angeles. I've had an attic on Oakdale Drive, a pink bedroom on Catalina Drive, a series of dormitories, and now recently a cluttered studio on Curson Ave. But while I lack a house that stands as a solitary testament to me as a person, my mother was fortunate. The way Anne had her Green Gables, Scarlett had her Tara, Catherine had her Wuthering Heights, my mother has Grotto Villa. She grew up in Grotto Villa and left the house when she married my father, joining him in small apartment in cold London and later helping him travel house-to-house in the States. But regardless of where we were, she insisted on her children visiting Grotto Villa, the original blueprint that spawned her eventual nest.

Grotto Villa of my childhood was a delapidated mansion surrounded in jungle redolence uncharacteristic for the urban bustle of Santa Cruz and Bombay. Guarded by an army of towering banyan trees, clad with monkeys and birds, the house was full of rotting paint, creaking wood floors, and an overgrowth of foliage and fauna that it could not contain. My brother and I would leave our sanitary suburbs to spend it at the tableside of my quiet, pensive grandfather and his devoted, dozing servant Dadu, while we reread Archies and comic renderings of the Ramayan, Gita, and Mahabharat in the slow, boring swelter( spiritual epiphanies between Arjun and Krishna sprouted in platitudinal white bubbles). We braved mosquito bites, the rats that resided in the forgotten hallway piano, and obligatory episodes of food poisoning despite my father's preoccupation with boiled water, overcooked food, and alcohol swipes. When our cousins would court us, the Amrikan cousins, they'd swagger, prop us up on the bars of their bicycles, and flaunt the ice cream we couldn't eat while we gazed in helpless obedience. Once, they dared us to drink dirty well water. My brother refused, but out of desperation, I did it. With a treumlous lip but brave eyes, I took a sip, enjoyed the congratulation of my cousins welcoming me to their depraved notions of sanitation. But soon after, I lay down on my bed, wary of the mice below the floorboards, looking up at the fan above me, swirling vainly against the impossible heat, and I waited. I waited for a comic book Krishna in his teal-blue complexion to come down from his heaven and provide me with the thought bubbles that would give me access to the secrets of the universe and eternity. But when Krishna never showed up and I didn't die, I thought myself invincible and made a daily habit of rose ice cream behind my father's back.

My brother's adjustment to Grotto Villa was more problematic. When my brother played a benign game of hide and seek, he found a mongoose in the pantry. He mistook the creature for my cousin Samrath, who seeing my screaming brother emerge from the dark kitchen, wrestled with the mongoose before throwing its exhausted carcass on the nearby train tracks. Nothing was ever quite what we expected. We regarded Grotto Villa, this large structure in another latitude, as a menace that we had to reckon with, because it was my mother's home; in its overpopulated lack of control, it was responsible for our upbringing in ways we struggled to understand.

My mother, however, rediscovered her element in that strange house. No matter where we moved in America, Grotto Villa was home. I often unearth old albums, looking at black and white photographs of the old Grotto Villa. The roof that I know now as wasteland of pigeon shit and broken glass once included a pagoda and a rose garden. The badmington court where my six foot grandfather, a strappy film moghul at the time, challenged his equally athetlic sons--now functions as a familial parking lot. The verandah where my uncle pretends to workout by lounging in sweats, once served as a court for aspiring auteurs to pitch their budding genius to my family, in hopes of their patronage. Tony Randall came to visit. So did Frank Capra.

Grotto Villa oversaw the Mukerji family, the way a great piece of architecture in fiction embodies an evolving chronicle. It was built in 1918, made of cement painted white with Mediterrenean tiles. My grandfather and his brother in law arrived in the house with their young wives and first-borns, renting a single room in the house, sleeping on the floor. As they both found gradual wealth and fame, my grandfather bought the house, which enabled the upbringing of his five sons and his single daughter, my mother. I only recently found this out from my father, who wondered how his wealthy father-in-law could tolerate a humble one-bedroom flat in London as being suitable for his daughter who grew up in a mansion. This gradual ascendance to complete ownership of Grotto Villa, for my father, explained a lot about the Mukerjis.

But my mother built her life elsewhere, bringing up children who spoke in a different accent, played with Transformers, had no concept of Prime Ministers but Presidents, graduated grades not classes, believed in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy, went to the opera, played Chopin on the piano and Vivaldi on the violin, but still insisted on learning Kuchipuri and Kathak in the basement, watching Sridevi films, and recited the Bengali alphabet and Sanskrit mantras with ignorant indifference. And as this family she sustained dissipated into college and professional pursuits that knew no geographic limitation, home in America had no architectural base.

Furthermore, her visits to Grotto Villa became increasingly challenging. First was the development of the property, the jungle toppled over to make room for a complex of mansions that would accomodate the ever expanding Mukerji clan. And gradually, my mother with each visit finds the film studio that my grandfather built, the financial source of her family legacy, being sold piece by piece to maintain the lifestyle of people who lack the ambition to sustain its glory. It breaks her heart, to see something so formidable, so saturated in memory, as a commodity.

So perhaps the novels were wrong. A bulldozer levels Green Gables, the walls of Wuthering Heights crumble, and Tara dissipates into dollars and commercial development. And that sanctuary of a past childhood no longer exists, leaving those who recall its immortal virtue uprooted and frusterated.

But as a bittersweet coda, my parents recently relocated to Kansas City, where my brother and I grew up. While perusing the real estate section in the Sunday paper, my mother found a picture that she liked. It's a pale pink house, with a swerving staircase, Mediterranean tiled roof, warped Edwardian glass and a mulberry tree. In no time, it became the new Maulik residence. Our persian carpets unravelled on its old wood floors with ease, our pictures of the family cluttered its walls, and my parents now sit in the kitchen drinking tea in the dim afternoon light discussing whatever it is that they discuss. When I went to first see this house, I developed an immediate attachment. Each window directs a softening beam of sunshine onto the furniture that has followed us with our various moves, but they also offer poignant views of our new neighboorhood: a black iron streetlamp, a sloped lawn, an elegant twist of branch, a birdhouse. 4600 Charlotte Street welcomed the Mauliks the way Howard's End offered itself to the Schlegels, and in the same comparison, I sometimes fancy myself to be a Mrs. Wilcox or a Margarent Schlegel, roaming my new home with ruminating foosteps in enchanted domestic complacency.

But here's the sweet coincidence: like Grotto Villa, 4600 Charlotte Street was built in 1918, and it boggles my mind to think that two houses erected in the same year on two different continents would later find the same woman, my mother, at different stages in her life, with family. And so it is: 4600 Charlotte Street belongs to a legacy, a testament to the forgotten myth of the American Dream--rebuilding a dying past on a new pasture.

Blowing off the Dust.

2007-08-20T20:24:00.000-07:00

So here I am. Again. I plan on taking this blank template and transforming it to an homage to a prior blog that briefly experienced a flurry of prose, thanks to the leisure of fourth year of medical school. But a lot has happened since the friendster version of monkeysoup, or as I had aptly called it: ruminations from a jungle full of blahblahblah and tralala. Perhaps, if I had to rephrase it now, I'd scratch the "tralala" bit.

As I said, a lot has happened.

For one, I started residency in obstetrics, started doing surgery, experienced a chronic state of severe intellectual/emotional/physical malaise typical for a resident, and in an act of desperation, I surprised myself by moving to Los Angeles ( who knew?). My parents subsequently moved back to the Midwest, and my brother became a "doctor"....of math, that is, earning his PhD and getting engaged to Katherine in the process. I wrote about this in an email to an old friend, and I'm tempted to cut and paste. There's a lot of ground to cover.

SO, yes, I'm already selling out at various levels: blogging, cutting and pasting from an old email, and moving to LA to feed my starry ambitions to drive among palm trees and talk cinema.

But I'll indulge you at a later time. For now, just when I about to embark on journey of nonsequitors, I will bid adieu for the time being, until the trick under my sleeve starts flapping its wings recklessly and creates a racket. You know it will.
dm