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Like A Revolution Passing through my Room

Saturday, 9 th April 2016, was the date on which the last of the Azaadi series of lectures was held- Utsa Patnaik speaking on Freedom and Development. After more than a month of lectures, first on nationalism, and then on freedom, an average JNUite knows what to expect during these evenings of gathering at Ad Block, now wonderfully christened Azaadi Chowk, Freedom Square, and in the words of another speaker, Ari Sitas, JNU’s own Tahrir Square (this is my favourite). Barring a few, or perhaps, just one- the delightfully(?) distracting Makarand Paranjape- scholars, activists, artists, workers, and writers, mostly avowed to a left ideology, or at the bare least, speaking the language of revolution, spoke here about struggle, freedom, and democracy. Of course, there were politicians too, a few who were allowed to speak only because of the need to keep portraying JNU as the last vanguard of the freedom of speech, a space that allows all a chance to make themselves heard. Thus it was, tha...
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The Tune that the Butterfly Sang

She pushed the wild purple flower, trying hard not to break it from it stalk. The bag of vegetables and papayas stood slumped on the ground. Beneath the bush, there was no telling where the ground sloped towards the playground. Her feet were firmly set on the ground, and she parted the bush aside, and craned. Any time now, she thought, the little iron bell would be rung by the ayah and the kids would come milling out. How would she spot her girl, she wondered. But another intuition suggested that she wouldn’t have a hard time spotting her. The first intuition was what drove her to the edge of the road, sneaking behind wild bushes, peering into the school grounds, on her way back home from the market. Today, she thought, she would see her little one in another world. The bell rung for the morning break. Ayahs in sari and cardigans instead of blouses walked around the ground as kids tottered out. 4 to 10 year olds, in maroon sweaters, and blue skirts and pant, bumping into each other...
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Smell- III: The Smell of Sleep

Each time I think about us, I think about the smell of your sleep lingering in the bedroom. As soon I wake up, I wouldn’t smell a thing. But as I return to the bedroom from the bathroom, I wouldn’t have to see you there, lying splattered like a bat on the bed cover, to know that you were there- I could feel the air telling me that. Does everyone have a smell in their sleep? You definitely did. What was it, a smell of your drool, or your farts, or your sweat? Or was it the smell of your thoughts and dreams that went unsaid as you lay down next to me? Was that what I thought I was smelling- the perfumes of all those men and women, whom you claimed you had loved before me, and along with me, all arising from you, as you slept, trying to get away from your dreams as far as possible. Somehow, that smell was the sign of our intimacy. What I couldn’t find while we were in bed, naked, or close to naked or what I searched for in the movement of your eyes as you slept, that I could whiff in ...
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Thoughts on Go Set A Watchman

Go Set a Watchman was perhaps, in my life, the most awaited book ever (and I am a Potterhead). When I first read To Kill A Mockingbird in high school, driven to it by many Reader’s Digest articles, I found in Atticus Finch the person I wanted to look up to as a model of integrity and character, as I was growing up. He held himself as answerable only to himself and taught his children the same. He became the conscience keeper of the entire town, and all this through the eyes of a young girl, in whose shoes I was only too happy to put myself in. While the early reviews did reveal that Atticus was going to be portrayed as a racist, the book did surprise me in many of its aspects. The progression from Scout to Jean- Louise didn’t seem all too strange- a tomboyish young girl, imbibed with values of independent thinking, growing up to become a headstrong young woman, ready to scandalise her reputation- holding aunt and continuing to be a stranger among other women, most of whom were ...
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Ramblings

Around 3:50 in the morning today, I found myself awake and looking at the yellow lamps that glow outside my window, from the courtyard. These final days of submission, when the supposed tension and pressure has broken me down completely that I cannot bring myself to work, and so sit around thinking of how e.e. cummings got his name, my alarm is always set to 4:00, and my biological clock wakes me up earlier than that. There is a small light outside my window- Delhi in the summer- and the strange fear of waking up to find the ghost of Elisa Lam in my room didn't scare me much. And yet, a certain fear silences my movements as I fidget around, looking for my slippers, that hadn't come back from their midnight stroll. That strange sense of having Poe's raven look at you from the window-sill, when you know that the shadows are just cast by over-grown aloes, that was stifling me. And then, in that moment of dead silence, even as I knew that the dawn was on to me, the first miaw ...
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Adventures of a Mundane Research Scholar- I

Fair Warning: This post straddles both my personal and academic confusions and choices. I was warned that this would happen, that when I chose to work on something like Ayurveda, I would one day find myself being one of the subjects of my study. And that day has come, when I, like others in the cases that I read, am appalled at my lifestyle and is consciously taking decisions to change it. Over the course of research on New Age health, I have had to look at various websites that cater to a population looking to lead a more holistic lifestyle rather than the very individualised and compartmentalised ones that they believe themselves to be leading. I was amazed at what people were willing to do towards this end and how it meant deliberating and making changes in multiple aspects that would have been taken for granted so far. This extended to stuff like making your own soaps, going off contraceptive pills and cycling to work. A considerable number of people believed they would find pe...
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Homeward Bound

The first Simon and Garfunkel song that I ever heard was Homeward Bound , rendered by Sandy Shaw. It came in a Readers Digest collection of the greatest songs by the greatest songwriters, a list that included John Lennon and Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach, the BeeGees, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson, and of course Simon and Garfunkel. I was 13 then, discovering my music horizons and where I belonged musicwise. Homeward Bound immediately went to my heart and my head; it seemed impossible to get the tune out of my head, while cycling to school, while bathing, while walking to my violin classes, I was always Homeward Bound . There was something about that 1966 song by two American singers that a 13 year old growing up in the suburbs of Chennai could relate to. For me, home was still a mystery. I had no clue as to where my ‘thoughts were esacpin, where my music’s playing and where my love lies waiting patiently for me’. I thought then that Chennai was my home and that I shouldn’t act...
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