Born to shine

Daler Mahendi once mentioned in an interview how his entire playlist for an event was tossed out by a very drunk audience member brandishing a gun. Obviously the band and lead singer followed the man’s cues.

Quite like a very young Amar Singh, aka Dhani Ram erstwhile sock creator who found that he had a willing audience as long as he was singing ribald, double entendre songs which seemed to come naturally to the place and time he was at. His inspirations were visual, audibles, implied and inherent in the psyche of the people and the lives they lived. Judging from the success of such ‘dirty ditties’ that appeared to be the local flavour, it feels natural that a young boy with a musical bent of mind caught on to the pulse of the people and sang those songs with gusto and unique personal flair.

The land of five rivers Panjab is often characterised as an experience, not just a place. Lush, plush with water, teeming with people who seem to up and leave for other parts of the globe and yet leave a flourishing populace of hopefuls behind. Synchretic in sharing food, a love of drama and a formidable spirit that never backs down and shies away from a fight, there is also a publicly recognised wish to shine.

Chamkila, literally meaning shiny was the moniker Amar Singh was awarded since his name wasn’t catchy enough for his audience. Likewise, they dictated pretty much all he did as a performer. Of course he did pay attention to other sections of the audience and their disapproval by creating spiritual songs which were as popular as his bawdy songs. But they did not make the cut with people like him who wanted to have a good time at events, laugh at jokes that were as real and home grown as the local mustard and enjoy the lusty nature of a shared culture where taboos were broken simply because privacy wasn’t a priority.

For those who rule the masses particularly feisty, spirited ones, religion is employed laced with a heavy dose of shame and guilt. Families join in reinforcing that and what one is left is a very confusing place to be. Be yourself and tread the tightrope of cynosure, banishment or be what you are told to be and get treated like filth.

Amar Singh Chamkila and Amarjot Kaur joined the ranks of other star crossed lovers whose love stories always ended in death. Perhaps because the successful ones were never spoken about? Drama after all requires great tragedy. It also requires tragic aftermaths, a silently echoing moral of behaving oneself otherwise…losing one’s parents like Jaiman Singh, Chamkila and Amarjot’s first son or dying at 15 days old like their younger baby.

The Persian

I woke up from a deep snooze with a feeling that a cat was watching me intently. I have a God given gift wherein I can and have slept off anywhere and everywhere without a second thought. I usually find myself wake up with people milling around me and me clutching my bag as if it’s going to be plundered.

I come awake on a train which I was on already so no surprises there. During that part of my life, I moved a lot on trains, buses, cycles and bikes. This journey was slightly different since I was seven months pregnant.

A little boy sat on the seat opposite me on the train. I had seen a similar cast of features, with the noble brow, magnolia clear skin, big but not protruding eyes, aquiline nose and strong jaw with a determined mouth to know this wasn’t an Indian. It was a face from the former land of Persia, or Iran.

I smiled, automatically. I said hi, to which the little boy nodded seriously and responded. He kept scrutinising me and told me, my stomach looked like a watermelon. It was weird but just that morning I had thought the same to myself while looking at my baby bump. Nothing could hide it, I didn’t try to hide it and entered rooms bump proudly leading the way. I ate whatever took my fancy, I slept and catnapped at random hours and in general did whatever everyone who came into my orbit told me. Not all of it was silly, a lot of it was smart stuff, and of course, people did mention that my bump would ride high or low depending on the baby’s gender.

So, both of us looked at the watermelon for a bit. I noticed my baby’s dad smoking near a door. He smiled and sent a thums up my way. I smiled back and noticed the Persian had noticed the interlude. He told me he had met the dad and asked me how old I was. I told him I was 21. He told me his brother was 21. He pointed to another part of the compartment, where two young men were sitting, watching us. He told me they were S and R. He was X. I told him, it’s interesting all of you are named after Persian kings. He smiled at me and said, that he lived in Pune, India. He also informed me, Persia was no longer Persia, it was Iran. His family had left Iran years ago and come to India. He was born in the port of Navsari and since he was the only one in the family who was born on Indian soil he was something special at home. I noticed his brothers’ slightly worried looks. Since he was probably only 10, I guessed the elder boys had gotten used to being default parents too.

I mean, they did try to call him back to their designated seats. But he was a natural born traveller and had gone to every part of the general compartment, he got shooed out of the first compartment since the TC recognised him. He had spoken to everyone around him in the adjoining seats and chosen to wait for me to wake up from my snooze so he could speak to me.

I was a bit surprised. I had been reading up Dr. Spock and speaking to mothers with little kids. They mentioned burping, poop colours, gas, and foods that I could feed the baby and how I must keep my schedule organised around the baby so my household didn’t fall apart. And yet surprisingly none of them mentioned what does one do if one’s child is naturally spirited. I idly wondered what X’s mom was like. Having a last baby who was as garrulous as this one must be wringing her out. Turned out he was allowed to rule the roost. His house was his kingdom and his mom pretty much let him have his way.

By now it was lunch time. My baby bump growled, loudly. Actually my stomach was guilty of that. But he was struck by this rumble. He told me, your watermelon is hungry. I grimaced. I hated feeling hungry. He told me we would go look for some food. I told him, we are not exactly wandering the Sahara, why are we foraging for food? It will come to us. He gave me a stern look. He recognised growling tummies, since he worked up a very healthy appetite. We walked to the pantry car where we weren’t allowed to be. He told them I was his friend and I was hungry and needed something at once.

We walked back with fried potatoes from the pantry. Silence followed since we were both very attentive to our snack. The compartment full of people waited for their designated meals, which we got too. X helped me finish mine and offered to finish french fries for his brothers who told him where to go in precise terms.

Later, my baby’s dad wanted to join me on the seat next to me. But X offered him his own seat with his brothers. Which was taken with a wry glance in my direction. Then we proceeded to have a random conversation, told each other stories, I listened to his opinion about everything under the sun and we reached the city of Pune.

As the station drew closer, both of us were silent. I guess he felt like I did, we were coming home. I had always marveled at the resilience of people who left homelands and went away to seek their fortunes across various parts of the world. But I guess if they were fearless and sweet like X, nothing would seem like a challenge.

Animal

I was on my way back from my first trip to the mountains. A month spent in pristine air, some times very little air and definitely very few people, apart from fellow trekkers. I’d been carried up impossible seeming roads on rickety buses and wondered what feat of willpower kept them together on the rocky road, for stable roads were few and far.

At every point were the valleys, the trees, the seemingly continuous mountain ranges and the sudden views of a chocolate layer cake mountain topped with ice and snow. It was very different from the last part of the trip, which was to a holy place seemingly at the roof of the world. Though, not really because there were higher points to access. At that height, it was white, black and silver. Even the trees didn’t bother with chlorophyll. They just survived. In craggy nooks, in slivers of earth in rocks. It was a place that seemed inhospitable but once there I found it difficult to leave.

I could understand someone crawling into a cave or grotto in such a place and living a life of austerity or actually rich abundance. On the way back, I picked some silver ferns, some lichens and petrified mushrooms from a much lower level as mementoes of my time out before returning to a city life where the daily commute may kill your soul much before you actually die.

The train was packed to the gills. The trekking group was divided up and I was given a seat by myself in a different compartment. By now after having seen so much natural bounty which was also incredibly powerful and survival of many species, I was feeling confident and top of my game. I’d been in the mountains. City life could not permeate my armor.

I put up my bag on the bunk above the single seat I was given and sat down and saw my co-passenger. She hadn’t been there a moment before. I won’t claim she appeared out of the blue, since this isn’t a ghost story. She wasn’t there one moment and the next moment she was and I noticed her. Simple, right?

So we exchanged pleasantaries and I found out she was traveling from the north, to my city, Pune. I was a bit surprised that she was travelling alone. She seemed like a home maker who hadn’t travelled much. Her clothes were of the rural belt, simple, traditional salwar kameez, a dupatta over her head and arms loaded with gold bangles. I wondered about her security, but it seemed, nobody would be able to get those bangles off if she didn’t want them taken.

A bit later, after the train was moving steadily and the journey was pretty much underway, she spoke. She asked me what I was doing. I told her I’d just finished graduation. I told her of my trip to the mountains. She was surprised that I had gone off to the mountains without a reason, as in not on a honeymoon. I asked her rather cheekily if that was the only reason. She replied, usually.

She went on to tell me about her daughter who was approximately my age, maybe younger who was married and had recently had a baby girl. She had been to the mountains for her honeymoon. She had returned to the city of Pune with her husband and his family and then there had been a long silence after that.

I wanted to ask for details, but I didn’t think I should rush it, besides who wants a conversation to turn into an interrogation? If anything were to be mentioned she would tell me. She proceeded with the story then. Her daughter called one day to tell her she was pregnant. She also told her mother quite matter of factly that her husband had left home. He had chosen to go to an ashram and become an inmate. His family had supported his decision to leave and offered her the option of staying with them or joining him at the ashram. She chose to stay at his house.

By now it was clear to me I had been given the broad details. I’d heard of this ashram and back then it was a gargantuan machine which seemed to swallow people up whole. At least that’s what I used to think prior to going to the mountains. Now I was not so sure. Since I wasn’t sure I could not make the usual noises expected in this particular situation. I waited for more.

Which came of course. A year or so later, her daughter called up again, telling her she had had a baby girl. Her mother was delighted and offered to come down and stay with her or bring her back home for a few days, but it wasn’t going to happen. She had been called as a courtesy. It was just a call, to let her know all was well, a baby was born…

Another phone call happened, just a bit earlier this time. When the baby would be around nine months old. The daughter called, her husband was dying. In fact, by the time her mother would get there, he would be dead. She asked her mother to come and fetch her and her baby girl. Her mother told her she could send her dad or brothers over. But her daughter simply said, no, you come. Only you.

We both sat in silence looking out of the common window our single seats shared. I wanted to say something…you know, wise, erudite, knowing, comforting, generic, platitude, but luckily for me it wasn’t something I could come up with. So I shut up and waited.

I heard her sniffle once or twice. A hand wearing gold bangles like a manacle lifted up to her face, the dupatta covering her head wiped at tears which had pooled at the corner of her eyes. I didn’t know if it was polite to watch her do this, I didn’t know if it was impolite to look away. Or should I smile sympathetically? That seemed like the creepiest thing to do, ever.

I asked her where she had to go. I offered to escort her there. She smiled sweetly and said, a vehicle would be sent for her. I asked who would be coming to pick her up. She said she was being picked up by the boy’s mother. I did not miss the irony of that…in fact suddenly my mind was working a breakneck speed and I could have told her everything about her life, the situations, the circumstances of it and why she and her daughter were in this predicament. And precisely because I knew with such certainty it seemed I knew nothing at all.

At the train station, we might as well have been strangers. She was cordial, and said goodbye before she was escorted off the train by a man who seemed like a family retainer. Her daughter’s mother-in-law stood at the gate of the station next to a monster truck or SUV…I stood back and watched, curious to see how this would play out. Would these two ladies acknowledge they were up shit creek and show each other compassion or would they just carry on and maybe be more compassionate that way?

It seemed that I may been in the abode of the king or lord of animals and birds, but the animals in the human metropolis would prevail. By definition, man is a social animal. There are qualities which being social confers, you can work better in large groups, you achieve greater success, you can distribute collateral damage over a vaster network and maybe reduce the sting of it. At that moment though man the animal had shown a very mundane and socially acceptable side which was barbaric and shocking and would be ignored.

ghosts of Christmas yet to come…

Disclaimer: No animals, birds, butterflies, angels or demons or humans were hurt while creating this piece. Any offence to any sentiments or value systems or highly developed outrage mechanisms is purely unintentional and definitely a sign of not having ‘woken’ up adequately.

This is a work of fiction…at least I hope so…

Location: Somewhere in an island city. Very specific home, which has french windows on both sides of the house, which opens to the east and the west. Balcony surrounding the house, filled with myriad often surprising plants. Minimal, in fact no furniture except for a very comfortable bed and a very solid work table which shows evidence of writing, painting and handicraft work. The house is perpetually filled with light, although in this particular moment it’s lit up by the light of a moody lantern and a few lamps here and there.

Silence abounds, except when it doesn’t. The preamble of the music leads to…

https://youtu.be/J123lM0RvzM?si=Cp59eMPI4gwsQDi5 (Heaven must be missing an angel by the Tavares)

Simmuli Melo: Hello, hello, hello! Welcome to present viewing of uncertain future. Angel is missing from heaven, she has landed on earth and now is going to do bhoot hoon main act for the behenji who lives in this house.

Annie: What nonsense, men. She’s not behenji. She’s my friend. And who are you? I am the angel for this job.

Simmuli Melo: You are angel, I am alive. Ha ha! I mean not alive, alive, but lively…no, not lively…live from backside of Mumbai…and I am a stuffed doggie.

Annie: I really have to read the fine print on my assignments. What they think, they can give me doggie partners or what?

Simmuli Melo: What doggie partner? I am not partner! I am full time emotional support device for young child, traumatised mental health issues wali mother and…any guest who needs entertainment in their household that only provides freshly cooked food at gunpoint.

Annie: No! That’s too harsh. Okay, so where is the the young child?

Simmuli Melo: She’s dancing queen.

https://youtu.be/l0MgG7-jWyc?si=jGEaLY0RDamyMxTx (dancing queen by Abba)

Annie: This is not dancing, men. This is English Kirtan.

Simmuli Melo: It’s power of the collective. Sing out of tune, sing the wrong line, maybe don’t even sing. But sing…so yes, I guess it is like aarti singing or hymn singing or bhajan kirtan. Oh God! My brain is having to work too much. I need to sit.

Simmul Melo flops down on the floor, since as mentioned before the house has no furniture. Angel Annie who is on a pale blue cloud snuggles in smugly. Simmuli Melo watcher her balefully and realises there’s no place for her on this version of cloud nine and picks up the conversational thread.

Simmuli Melo: So Annie, I knew mental mama when she was younger and fatter. How you know her?

Annie: I lived in the same building as her when she was younger and slimmer. I was old, back then. Well, a very bright old person, I think. But I was alone and we became friends. I liked her company and she liked mine.

Simmuli Melo: So, today program is Ghost of Christmas yet to come. You look young. You are not ghost, you are angel. Why are you here?

Mental Mama : (entering room with towel wrapped around her head) Because she is the only one I can think of when I think of my future. As an older lady.

Simmuli Melo (transfixed by the sight of Menntal Mama’s wrapped up head) : Okay. When do we get to unwrap you? Or the towel travels everywhere?

Annie: No, she’s probably taking one of her legendary head baths.

Simmuli Melo: Yes, I suppose there is more head than hair on it right now.

Mental Mama: Simmuli Melo, as always, your rudeness has transcended into stuffed toy heaven too, it seems. But as with a lot of people with no boundaries, you are partially right. My head doesn’t have much on it these days. What’s in it is hassling me more.

Simmuli Melo (speaking in what she mistakenly believes is a stage whisper): I could have sworn that even the inside of your head doesn’t have much in it…but who am I to say anything? Besides I have to try to be supportive, na?

Mental Mama: Oh there is plenty in my head! Some of which is stuff I am trying really hard to unload. Other stuff is very useful stuff, which I apply once in a while, more so now since I am all by myself and don’t encounter folks at every step who object to my thoughts, my application of my thoughts and my version of reality.

Annie: That’s pretty much why you’ve lived up to the title of mental mama in this piece…

Mental Mama: Yep.

Simmuli Melo: So, tell me, Mental Mama are you glad to see me?

Mental Mama: Yes. I remember the first time we met. You promptly declared yourself married to our stuffed tiger Sheru and put him through agonising despair.

Simmuli Melo: How sweet of you to remember! Sad he lost his insides in that washing machine you insisted on putting him in. Why did you do that, why?

Mental Mama: My sympathies, but I have to wash clothes, stuffed animals, and emotional support companions in a washing machine once every few years.

Annie: No, men. Just put dust cover on them. It’s okay. Why to wash?

Mental Mama: Dry clean?

Annie: Too expensive.

Simmuli Melo: And now, back to me again. So how did I help you to find your mental bliss, peace, solace?

Mental Mama: Well, you helped me by allowing me to say the rudest things ever, as said by you, (Simmuli says) and being snide, snarky and wickedly funny, while at the same time not saying them as myself.

Simmuli Melo: Ah like talking bear Ted?

Mental Mama: Yes, in a way. You were the voice the turmoil in my head chose to express itself. Annie, so who sent you? Don’t you have a message for me? And don’t you have to deliver it silently like the ghost who met Ebenezer Scrooge?

Annie: No, these days ghostly encounters have to have a lot of talking involved. You could misunderstand, re.

Mental Mama: Misunderstand what? You don’t look like Annie when I knew her, you’re much younger, but your voice and your value system is still the same.

Annie: No, no, it’s like that only now. No more silent ghosts. They have to talk, express themselves and convey the message to the person they visit. No grey area ,anymore… Keep it black or white…

https://youtu.be/F2AitTPI5U0?si=YyP28S2RhQ61-rBM

Simmuli Melo: Black or white? Now there’s black, white, brown, coffee milk, and honorary tiger too! People say they are LGBTQIA+…Black and white is basic!

Mental Mama: Probably, and a lot of us are going back to the basics by saying out loud who they are, what they believe in and not wanting to ‘integrate’ or be more palatable or acceptable. They can be themselves.

Annie: So you chose to be yourself too and have mental health issues now?

Mental Mama: I’ve always suspected I had them. It’s just that beginning the second innings makes it more difficult to lie. in fact you don’t need to lie about yourself and your place in the world anymore. No need to be a square peg in a round whole or marketable. There is only one option. Take a good hard look at oneself and start working on that raw material. By the time I kick the bucket, hopefully something good may come out of this particular life in this part of the multiverse.

Simmula Melo: Achha, what you are doing in another part of multiverse?

Mental Mama: I am driving a train across Saturn. I am growing potatoes on Neptune. I am…

Simmuli Melo: Bas! Whose idea is multiverse? Haan? Tell me now.

Annie: Yeah men, every film of Spiderman has multiverse only. And that Michelle Eoh…

Mental Mama: Yeoh.

Simmuli Melo: Yahoo!

Annie: Yes, that one only, men. So from where this multiverse thing came? https://youtu.be/Ugyrzr5Ds8o?si=9HwKaheKMBHKhbvz

Mental Mama: I think, this multiverse thing is within us, since we think of ourselves in terms of our own lives, what our lives were, how they could be and how they will be. Problem is, when you’re facing what will be as something that will soon be a present day reality there’s little wiggle room. Say if you have the chance to make something great in your life happen, all you have to do is overcome your own mental blocks, would you do that? And when you do that what will you do?

Annie: You breathe.

Simmuli Melo: (drawing deep noisy breath) Yes, good idea. Take past into present and let it become future. Keep breathing so future can be breathable present and turn into past. And then keep breathing even after that…

Mental Mama: Till you stop breathing? I watched my dog do that, a few months ago. All his life concentrated into the last few rattling breaths he took. I can say I have never felt so present in a moment and yet I wished I didn’t have to be there. I kept thinking his death would set me free, it didn’t. It left me with a lot of grief which came from pure love, and I could not push it away by saying that the object of my affection didn’t deserve it. If anything he deserved all the love in the world and I wish I were capable of giving it to him…

Simmuli Melo: Hello, hello! Welcome back to Simmuli Says, and I am your ghostly host with the most…viewers, influences, likes, shares, subscribers. This moment is a very emotional genuine pyaar se bhara moment and I invite you to share with me the sight of an unearthly angel Annie sitting on her rapidly melting cloud nine, trying to hug mental mama who is crying her eyes out and having a hot flush at the same time. So for all those who wish to remix this moment, mujhe tag karo phir jo kuchh karna hai karo!

Mental Mama (laughing through sweat and tears): You realise your insanity is very inspiring to me, don’t you?

Simmuli Melo: Why re? You’re perfeclty capable of having mental meltdown as we all know. I remember one part of your life when ‘bhenchod’ appeared in all your sentences like a comma or even a full stop.

Mental Mama: Yes, that was a very profane period of my life.

Simmuli Melo: You want 5 minutes of therapy for that?

Mental Mama: I believe it was part of my aggrieved entitlement. I felt I had been through so much in terms of bad childhood, I was assured of a great youth with fabulous success tagged on as a perk.

Annie: Nice idea, men. But you only get as much as you can handle, no?

Mental Mama: I believe that is correct.

Simmuli Melo: Just imagine, you got to handle me! Such a privilege.

Mental Mama: Actually all of it…right now I am only grateful.

Annie: Well, so my job is done.

Simmuli Melo: Job? All you did was sit on the cloud and comment once in a while. What you did?

Annie: Simmuli, ghosts of Christmas yet to come have been contract bound to keeping their pieholes shut most of the time. Just seeing them makes people nostalgic, and introspective. The idea is for them to engage themselves. Find out what’s wrong within and heal it.

Simmuli Melo: Arre…if you told me my pie hole would be filled I would have asked mental mama for pie. Can she give me some? Can you, mental mama?

Mental Mama: Sorry, I am sublimating my feeling through art and writing right now. I no longer eat them.

Simmuli Melo (thunderstruck that a new item has appeared on the menu): Eating feelings? Who does that? Why wasn’t I told it can be done? I have so many feelings! I want to eat them all! What I have been missing on…taste of life, taste of Simmuli Melo’s mind…

Annie: I think, readers should be warned that Simmuli Melo is building up to her own Youtube Channel called Simmuli Says.

Mental Mama: Oh God. No. God help those who actually start hailing her as a new age voice of reason.

Annie: Anything can happen, you know. But as she has said, keep breathing is always good advice. See you, mental mama.

Endpiece: The view from the sea shows mental mama in bed huddled under a couple of razais, Annie floating away on cloud nine and Simmuli Melo settling into her new ride, a rocket captained by Flash Gordon, her latest husband in a long line of significant others.

https://youtu.be/x0NVb25p1oU?si=vyryuSKFRSmYGx4U

• Instagram

Interview with a vampire

Vetaal was bored. That was saying a lot since he had been around for centuries…but he had come to value quality of life more than his years as an immortal slash ether based soulless entity.

As a young vampire he had preyed on the innocent in teh name of religion long before he actually realised his true calling.

It was only after becoming the royal priest to a great king that he found he could make a deal with the devil, sell his soul fo immortality and generally do all that humans would do in later eras to stay on in slavish professions, bad relationships and toxic lives.

But soon the king died and Vetaal had to leave the kingdom as the new king did not see eye to eye with him. Hell, he never even consulted Vetaal and seemed to know how to deal with him…by not engaging with him…at all.

Stripped of all power, Vetaal moved to a cremation ground for the lost and abandoned in the middle of a dense forest. He created an aura about himself amongst the animals in the forest by causing some unearthly happenings and settled down to a mostly humdrum existence with only an occasional human to scare to death, literally and the souls of some of the recently dead who could not accept death as yet.

A brief respite came in the form of a freshly minted king who arrived four generations after the first devoted king. Vetaal was suddenly alive again, only in a manner of speaking of course.

He and the new king were connected because the new royal priest had convinced the king that he would regain the lost grandeur of the kingdom by getting back the corpse of his predecessor…which Vetaal had stashed in the innards of a nearby tree.

Vetaal had to smother a laugh at this, but began to realise that opportunity had come to his neck of the woods and must be milked for all it was worth. A huge throne would have to be built with shards of wood from the tree Vetaal lived on. The king would earn one every full moon eve when he came to the forest at midnight and answered a riddle, couched in the form of a story.

And so it happened. The process was followed and the new king managed to get 32 shards of wood from Vetaal. The throne was constructed and the court scribe chronicled the stories which were told to all and sundry with or without embellishments.

But…time passed and the king stopped visiting Vetaal. Vetaal could have gone to the palace and had a ghostly encounter with his fans, but he knew it would be a mistake. They could visit him anytime they liked.

And by the looks and sound of it, a team of his fans was on its way to meet him. His highly developed senses could tell that the atmosphere in the forest was changed, charged with wild, useless and totally misleading energy. The kind which would lead people to the wrong path for sure, which would find the most powerful traders and rulers and happily do their bidding. Vetaal licked his chops as he realised he was about to meet a team of tabloid journalists…

Endpiece: For any curiosity anyone may have about this story from this point on, please turn on any news channel to watch the droves of news journalists who routinely set out to find the locations mentioned in the great Indian mythology.

finding…

A hotelier invites a former aide to a great Godman, who called himself God and who was instrumental in setting up his great empire as it were. The hotelier’s intent is frankly never in question. I do question the people making this small film about the woman who once was Ma Sheela, when really Wild Wild Country had already said it all.

Perhaps, people needed to know that Sheela was so much more than her persona. Perhaps they needed to know the truth behind her actions. Perhaps they sought greater layers and more depth than seemed to be visible. Every person who seeks to ‘find’ Sheela in this presentation is mocked by her, most politely for asking ‘the same old questions.’ Quite forgetting that those questions, albeit unanswered are the reason why she is being asked out for her various ‘dates’ with ordinary and extraordinary people, if you will.

As an endpiece, Sheela mentions the talk about redeeming herself and says that redemption is about guilt, which she does not feel and perhaps that is why those who seek to find and question her will be disappointed. There is no redemption for one who seeks no atonement. There is no empathy for others who have trusted and cared to further the causes of others only to be let down. She doesn’t feel that way. Maybe she is not empathetic? Maybe she doesn’t care what she has to do to get the job done? I would say the latter.

The documentary Wild Wild West appeared in the new millenium. Back in the late eighties, Osho Ashram in Pune where I was growing up was a hub of people coming in from the world over, shedding their identity to take on Sanyasin form and groping around for something to create a new religious order.

I say groping because although the management was clear about merchandising the Sanyasin look, the literature, the other odds and ends, they really had no clue about how they were going to sell the ultimate cupcake, bliss and peace. Transcendental meditation was the product, it had to be packaged and a process had to be created to reaching that product. How could they not? Otherwise people chopping onions mindfullly in their kitchens may claim to find salvation. Even though I sound like the supreme sceptic in this moment, let me assure you, I believe chopping onions is a great cleanser and I saw a lot of merit in the way the Oshoiites channeled their confusion into very beneficial and artistic activities.

The problem with most religions is without a doubt it’s insistence on monogamy or celibacy, depending on which branch you seek. So what if someone offered you a religious experience, while telling you that it wasn’t your gender, age, or race that would factor. You would be faceless, nameless, formless, almost like the entity one is expected to believe created the world. When that happens, then comes the inevitable phase of creation since a buttload of guilt and shame about identity has been taken off. So came the kibbutz kitchens, the farming, the conversion of a wasteland into a Japanese garden…all the while proving that this branch of religion didn’t sneer at profit. It encouraged hard work and creativity to bring in more profits.

In Finding Sheela, the former Ma Sheela and now Sheela asks why nobody asked her where she found the strength to build such a huge enterprise. The answer is evident to me. Just like any other opportunistic, narcissictic business minded tycoon who sees a good idea and goes all out to sell it hard and soft to the gullible customer. In that respect Sheela is no different from any other MD of any succcessful company in the world. She does what it takes and doesn’t care a fig what the consequences are. I know at least one God, who is basically known for that tagline. So to find Sheela is really to examine the concept of religion which requires no selling. Each one creates a personal God and worships in a uniquely personal way.

the slot

‘So what are you then?’

The man who asked the question was clean and neatly dressed in traditional Islamic gear. It was a pretty direct and quite intrusive question, but in the early nineties space was not a concept young people were afforded much.

So it was that I often found myself explaining my ‘difficult’ identity situation to the whole world and it’s aunt, vainly hoping they would make some sense of it or at least be put off enough to stop talking to me altogether. But sometimes there was the stray concerned cookie who wondered about the state of my immortal soul.

‘I am definitely human and definitely a woman.’

‘No, but what religion are you? Your father is Sikh, your mother is Marathi and you look like somebody who doesn’t care about the rules of either religion. So how will you manage?’

I now get the underlying concern. It was basically the feeling that my life lacked the essential bedrock that religion brings. The choice of a way of life, routine, lifestyle habits and of course fraternity. Nothing brings people together as much as religious fervor and it can be used to mobilize people to great things, but…

I spared the stranger my personal take, not just because it was too impersonal a setting but also because back then my own take was a nebulous idea at best. It hadn’t been backed by life and experiences and the articulation needed to put it into so many words fazed me.

It was much later that I realized that the duality in my gene pool was actually to my advantage physically. However the problems arise in the socio anthropological zones. Did I like ‘Marathi food?’ Did I like ‘Punjabi food?’ I liked all food, period. I didn’t see a problem there.

Next up, clothing. I liked anything which felt comfortable which made most finery from any religion anathema to me. Cottons and handlooms didn’t cut it as fitting attire in either group.

Later when it came to the marriage market, I realized that all guys, good, bad, indifferent, were the same. You could trawl the seas of any culture and religion, it was pretty much the same riddle and mystery to solve. And of course, there was always the mansplaining.

Raising a child had nothing to do wtih religion, apart from being religious about schedules…which I never was. Kids are divinely blessed and godless creatures in equal measure. The first time my child walked into school without a backward glance, my womb actually cried out a ‘fada’…luckily there were other parents sharing my misery.

When it came to rituals, I discovered I could not fast. Karva Chauth was agony the first year and I found a loophole by eating in the morning and reversing the fast on it’s bum. Shitla Saptami I ate only ice cream since you could not eat hot home cooked food. And finally, marriage rituals…every single marriage or pooja or event had it’s own set of rules. People had poojas for every reason and occasion. I recently was invited to a pooja for inauguration of building repairs. Obviously, I passed.

I believe and have been informed by reliable sources that this non-participative behaviour has a big part to play in my social and economic failures. Apparently getting together for a religious occasion spells an unwritten complicity in all things good and decent…

And yet the big missing part of the puzzle for me was always spiritual evolution, faith and true bliss. Not roaring joy, not the depths of despair, bliss is the state in which we find ourselves most true to our inner voice and inclination, most aware of our potential and capable of making it work to our benefit.

It was after many hits and runs with life, experiences which knocked the wind out of me and other events which made me feel like I could fly that I figured the good bits of any and every religion would help if I were receptive. There are no bad bits, there is only human rigidity that complicates things.

At that moment by the bus stop, the man in Islamic gear did not know I would meet a girl in the future who would consider Hanuman a dad after her own father passed. I didn’t not know I would start chanting and meditation after some traumatic experiences.

To all those who seek to find the slot in which we fit in easily, please seek it. For all who believe the temple of body and soul is the true shrine, please believe it. For all who think belonging to a group professing a faith is the true path, please follow that lead.

In the end, none of us will make it out of here alive.

the ever so slightly morbid tale of the fabulous Ms T

Ever since her birth, the fabulous Ms T was just that. Fabulous. Her baby pics, her actual presence and her public appearances were all hailed with joy and delight by all concerned. The cooing, the smiles, the general appreciation she garnered were quite a sight to behold.

It was clear from the start that even if she didn’t do so much as lift a finger to earn her profound fame she would always have people around her who loved her enough to gush over her and care for her by every means possible.

This blessed state continued into her youth and since she had hit the genetic lottery in terms of face and body and was unassumingly beautiful, she was hard to miss.

They say we are only as beautiful or as young as we feel. Not so true, because the company we keep can be a big influence. After forty odd years of sheer adulation, Ms T was actually sick of being told how good she ‘looked.’ She was even more sick of pretending that she actually gave a fuck.And yet, the compliments now sheathed in a patronizing package continued, always harking back to her youthful beauty as if it had earned her a place in a special hall of fame.

She tried hard to let herself go and was dismayed to find that it was not an option. Natural beauty requires litttle aid and sometimes sheer joy can mend and patch the ravages of bad choices.

So casting all care and convention to the wind, Ms T did what many cosmetics companies suggestively insert into their campaigns, the idea that you may be any age, you can make it look good and what’s more do it all while being yourself, aided and abetted by their products.

At the end of her living days, she was faced with a suddenly crippling fear that she would really miss all the attention she had been getting. And furthermore, who would remember her?All these ideas clamored for space in a mind that was already cluttered and beginning to lose it’s edge. She decided that although her soul would go wherever it pleased her body at least would continue to be, for lack of a better work, beloved…

The students of a small town medical college first met Ms T as a fresh young cadaver. She was famous as the corpse who had provided vital organs, cornea, skin to many donors. Now, she was there on the dissection tables to be shown off for her musculature and much later in skeleton form.

And as always, she remained beloved, still refered to as the fabulous Ms T.

Note to gentle and not so gentle readers: Cadaver donation is real.

Awakening

She opened her eyes to a pre-dawn sky. She didn’t find it unnatural at all. In fact, it was almost elemental, the way birds or animals and plants respond to light and the life giving sun.

Holding out her arms, she waited for the early light to cover them. She didn’t feel anymore that her sight was the only sense she could employ. There were other faculties and they were making their presence felt. She was aware of the sounds of the slight breeze rustling through the leaves, the faint creaking of branches of the truly ancient trees which had weathered so much.

The soil under her feet, between her toes felt moist, promising full of life and possibility and yet there was a hint of decay blended in, which only cheered her since it meant even death wasn’t an ending, merely a transformation.

The air smelt of the foliage, the herbs and the creatures that lived within.

She suddenly felt parched and reached out for the dried gourd that she had hollowed and filled with water so she would not have to leave the spot she was transitioning in.

She smiled grimly at her own choice of words. Transitioning was a pretty fancy way of describing a phase in her training when she had to stay out of house and home in the middle of a dense forest.

A hundred and eight days ago, she settled on the forest floor. She closed her eyes, switched out all external stimuli and delved deep into her inner world. Casting out every thought that wasn’t essential she chanted the mantra till she was breathing it.

Every breath was offered up as a sacrifice, every exhalation brought it back so she could repeat the sacrifice. Soon her eyelids closed, not in sleep but a deeply meditative state. Her heartbeat slowed, every gentle thud now regular, her breath evened and the blood flowed serenely through the myriad channels it normally gushed through in a chaotic rush.

She sensed a change about to occur and focused on her arms again. The first ray of sun trickled through the forest canopy. She looked at it tenderly, turning up her palm so that it was cupping the tiny ray of light. She smiled slightly and the forest was lit up by strands of light filtered by the leaves, the branches, trailing vines.

In the early dawn light her arms were midnight blue, with an embedded shine as if there were a million stars shining through. Each hand ended in long shining nails which were tipped with red. Somehow she just knew it was dried blood. Just as she knew she did not have just one pair of hands. There were many and they were doing all the other jobs her single pair of hands would do otherwise.

She stood up and shook off the dust gathered on her and the skirt of human forearms around her waist. She looked at that for a moment, wondering. What use were they? They did not seem alive, but they seemed to do away with the need to wear clothes. at least on the lower half of her body. Her chest and torso were gloriously bare, with only her blue black mass of hair which sprang from her head with a will of it’s own, covering it.

She had been told that this was a pure form she would transform into. She would be self sufficient, fight solo, be fearless and terrifying for those who looked for the conventional in her.

But she hadn’t expected all this fierceness to be set off as it were against an innate compassion, affection for the living and non living elements around her. She hadn’t expected to feel so supremely in control and yet no hankering for company because she sensed a kindred spirit with everything and everyone around.

Daybreak came, followed by the start of a new day. There was still a long way to go. She would get there, she knew. She would enjoy and relish every step on the way and whatever emotions it brought along.

The goddess smiled…

dead of the night

Inspector B ended his day at 2 am. It was a beat which wasn’t too tough. Just boring. How much true crime could you get and expect around a suburban train station in Mumbai?

He grimaced as he felt the fatigue catch up on him. He got into his beat vehicle. The next day would begin early. He wanted to get home, listen to some music and sleep.

As a young boy he had trained classically in Hindustani music. The discipline of it agreed with him. He loved immersing himself in the music, the phrasing, the high and low notes…who would have ever thought he would end up in a police job, practicing music as diligently as his physical workouts and feel life flow by him smoothly…

Though it was a hard won peace. His parents were keen to the point of being insistent that he should get married. He just could not muster up any enthusiasm for the idea. Even when they both got ill from a virus, he ignored his relatives’ pleas of getting married for them to get a nursemaid. He hired a nurse and a cook and made it work. His parents were silenced by his effeciency and finesse in doing his job, taking care of them, budgeting for the house and help and generally proving to them he didn’t need a significant other unless he wanted her to share his life and space.

Their deaths were inevitable, but not too long or protracted and he was glad they would leave life and embrace new beginnings at approximately the same time. It seemed poetic and very romantic to him and he understood why his father cherished a Mughal miniature of a man and his lady standing together close in a wooded forest. Their togetherness was palpable…real…

At around the same time that his parents died, Inspector B was working on a missing person’s complaint. It was a painful case, because it was filed by an obviously distraught husband about a young, alluring wife.

Based on their conversations which were to the point packets of information, Inspector B gleaned that life in the household of Mr. W was organized, methodical, brisk, religious, insular and boring af for a young woman of 23.

Based on the same conversations, Inspector B began to hope she would never be found…at least not for Mr. W and not by him.

It was only late in the nights while feeling the afterglow of a pieece of music that he would acknowledge to himself that his feelings for her were tinged with a real longing. He knew it was silly, unrealistic and unprofessional too, but there you are. That is how it was.

The case was eventually closed six months later. Simply and without any fuss. A divorce notice arrived, which Inspector B photocopied and filed away with an inaudible sigh. If only…she could have at least come to the station…but then, why should she?

He turned a corner and had to brake hard. There were two dogs tugging hard on a stick. They responded to a low sweet whistle and ran to a young woman dressed in a long skirt and top. She had a packet of treats in her hand which she offered them.She straightened and turned. Inspector B froze. He turned off the engine, got out of the vehicle and walked towards the so far elusive former Mrs.W.