Monday 28 June 2010

Nature — And Me

My early morning friends... Common mynahs, Brahmini mynahs, sparrows, crows, tree pies, koels, little brown doves, babblers or seven sisters, parakeets and plenty of squirrels. Once in a while, a woodpecker tries to cheer me while at others there's a sunbird here and there. Oh! And I forgot the ubiquitous pigeons.
There are also three dogs that seem particularly pleased to greet me. Reminds of that line in the Sound Of Music song
Edelweiss, edelweiss, every morning you greet me
Edelweiss, edelweiss, you look happy to meet me.

Of the two dogs, there is a brown street dog, a brown street dog and a white lab. This white lab pup just wouldn't stop wagging its tail at me, and well, from where I stood, and the narcissus in my eye saw him (yes, it's a him) flapping it's ears and enticing me :D

Will try and get pics some day.

Rest of the day friends... Parakeets, red-vented bulbuls, crows, sparrows, purple sunbirds, pigeons, common mynahs and the occasional LBD... All aiming for the best mango and warring with spunky squirrels for the booty on this mango tree outside my house.

My evening friends... Common mynahs again, crows and many more sparrows — male as well as female — magpie robins, babblers a plenty, red-vented bulbuls (I haven't spotted too many of these during my morning sojourns), pigeons once in a while, hawks and an imaginary duck.

Friends of the night... dark skies and at times the moon, but most often my pillow and sleep.



And yesterday, a white dove made a fleeting appearance and created a lasting impression on my mind. The symbol of peace, in flight.

Friday 25 June 2010

One message and a thousand wasted tears.

Two pieces of broken hearts went their different ways five years ago.
Splinters from both entered my eye together all these years later

The tears were bound to flow when the memories surged ahead.
Washing my soul of all the efforts I had put in to steady my own broken heart

Weakening me for a moment, bringing up all the old doubts again
Why had I parted ways with my loved one. Will I regret it five years later?

Then I realised that both my friends have surrounded them with new people and lives
And that old pain of a lost soul mate surfaces now and then, only to subside

Time will heal, a decision will be made, and we’ll again be left with the same choices
To accept or not accept, and to accept with grace or resignation, faith or frustration.

Thursday 24 June 2010

Watched Raavanan again. Loved it again. Loved Vikram all over again. It's been a while since I indulged in such madness...watching the same film twice in a single week... :D feeling young again.
I remember watching Life is Beautiful in Calcutta twice in the theatres on two consecutive days. I loved that movie. I guess I went to watch it with Tenzing on Day One and my brother Srinath on Day Two.

Wednesday 23 June 2010

Memories...
I had a pen pal named Prameela VinayKrishnan. Actually, Prameela aunty was my mother's classmate and she had left her address in one of those autograph books that were so popular in school days. I found her entry interesting, then I found her. We kept in touch for quite a few years and even met once in Chennai. But then that relationship fizzled out. She moved to Malaysia, I out of my starry-eyed admiration for such quaint relationships and we moved on.
What comes to mind today is a greeting card she had sent me. I think it was after my Class X board examinations, in which I had performed quite well.
The card said 'Good things come to Good people'...
Am not sure how far this holds true, but yes...sometimes it does happen. And thank God for such reaffirmations for faith.
It is necessary to have faith to have it reaffirmed.
Amen

Friday 18 June 2010

Raavanan — Veera Veera Veera...

Raavanan — an overall visual feast.
After watching a movie that claimed to take off from the Mahabharata and found it apt to go back to the epic whenever it suited the script, Raavanan was much better.
Set in the rainforests of Kerala, with glorious waterfalls to keep company, and Vikram sizzling the screen with his performance, what more can you ask for. It was a two-and-a-half hour visual delight.
I'm a Vikram fan, so don't blame me if you watch the movie and fail to get impressed. I loved it. And I lapped it up. And I intend to watch it again in Hindi tomorrow to compare the performances of the Tamil and Hindi cast. Ok, I know Abhishek does not stand a chance in front of Vikram and the trailers have proved that amply. But the rest of the Tamil cast was good and a revelation.
The miserable wet blanket was Prithviraj, who played Dev, the policeman whose wife Ragini (Aishwary) gets abducted by Veera (Vikram).
Veera is a tribal chief, who takes on the power-that-be to become a demi-god for his people. The policemen, corrupt and ruthless, face the brunt of his wrath until Dev comes to terminate him. The two take on each other and in the course of events, Veera kidnaps Dev's Sita and takes her to his forest abode. The 14 days that follow set the background for the story.
Aishwarya, though predictably plastic in the first few scenes, makes up in the rest. Prabhu in the role of Vikram's elder brother and dear old Karthik, whom I'm watching in a movie after ages, and who plays the Hanuman-like forest guard, did a good job. A commendable performance was of Vikram's sister, played by award-winning actress Priyamani. I heard she is repeated in the Hindi version too and has done equally well.
What I loved best, besides Vikram of course, was the beginning. Mani Ratnam got right down to the story without creating a long-winding prelude. The story unfolds gradually.
Though the movie seemed jumpy in parts and some scenes seemed to be added after a later consideration, for instance the treatment of Lakshman-like cop Hemanth who was Dev's right-hand man and the Hanuman-meets-Sita-under-the-Ashoka-tree scene.
The abduction of Ragini, with the underwater shot of a boat crashing, the shot where she jumps into the waterfall and the misty mountains and waterfalls are a must-watch.
Not just Raavan's, Ram's grey shades are also brought out beautifully in the film. And now I'm running out of time.
Please watch it. And please, please, please....if you MUST watch it in Hindi, don't judge the movie before watching it in Tamil.

Tuesday 15 June 2010

Smells that remind me of home.... waking up to the smell of breakfast, sun-dried clothes, jasmine flowers

Sunday 13 June 2010

A dust storm broke out over Delhi a few hours ago. Within a matter of a few minutes, the oppressive heat and haze of the past few days made way for a glorious summer evening. The heat is still there. But there is more clarity. I can see the beautiful sun spreading its rays over the city. The green looks green instead of a muggy grey. The winter-like mist is gone. There is some clarity, at least for now. But the fog will return and catch us unawares if we are not too careful.
How much care can one take to keep the fog away?

Tuesday 8 June 2010

Bhopal verdict — a disappointment?

The Bhopal verdict came and went.
Many people were disappointed. But seriously, what were they expecting?
We lost the Bhopal battle long ago, again and again. Yesterday, it was just once again that we lost it.
December 3, 1984: People dying like flies after inhaling the Methyl Isocyanate emanating from the Union Carbide factory. Doctors helplessly watching them die as they did not know what the poison was and what drug to administer.
Warren Anderson CAME to India. You cannot fault him on that. Then we just helped him leave, made all the arrangements and wished him Godspeed... Am not surprised he never came back.
We said it was criminal negligence when it was culpable homicide. If people working at a pesticide plant did not know switching off a refigeration unit would have affected the safety standards at the factory and proved devastating, as they did in 1983, what were they doing there? Why were they allowed to be there? And if they did something so inane, should it be negligence or homicide? It could be negligence if they did not know...but there is evidence that they were informed about the act and the dangers it posed.
Why did we let them off?
We asked for more than 3 billion dollars in compensation. Forget the 15,000 and counting lives lost. That sum, disbursed well, could have helped those who survived live a life of dignity with better medical facilities and probably research that could prevent the disastrous effect the fumes had on generations to come.
We settled for a pittance. $470 million...We sold ourselves and our people for that sum. Whom were we trying to appease?
We let a case that involved the immediate death of 3,000 people and the subsequent deaths of thousands others drag for more than two decades. We never made the attempt to make the man who headed the Union Carbide accountable for the disaster the company caused.
We forged new ties with the company in its myriad forms. We accepted funds from it in other ways. We told the people they were hallucinating when they claimed the water in the area was poisoned.
We allowed the generations that followed forget the Bhopal Gas Tragedy so much so that in Bhopal today there are people who did not what happened on a cold winter night of 1984.
We clamour for justice. We want those men to be sent to the gallows. And we are disappointed when seven of them get two years in prison. Why?
The people who are struggling everyday for pure drinking water, adequate compensation and more may be agitating because they believe in justice. I am sure they will appeal the trial court's verdict.
But I am a cynic. Or have I become one? I know the same politicans who allowed Anderson to get away, who claim the water from the area surrounding Union Carbide's skeletal factory is drinkable, will be voted back to power. And they will continue to spend millions on building a memorial for the gas victims even as they cite paucity of funds when it comes to spending on research into the ongoing effects of the dance of death.
And the same politicians will set up more memorials when another such industrial disaster, god forbid, occurs in some other unsuspecting factory in some other part of the country.
For God's sake, there's more to worry about right now. And public memory is short-lived. We will wait for the next anniversary before raking the same old facts again. Meanwhile, life will go on in the ghettoes of old Bhopal, and in a sunny villa somewhere in the US.

Rain, memories and more

Waking up to the rains always takes me back in time to a city I loved a lot and some wet pages from diary of life.
Monsoon mornings used to be dark, yet cheerful in Calcutta. If the rains had just begun the night before, a trudge to school through flooded roads would be in order, followed by empty classrooms, socks handing from chairs, special tiffin to be shared with special friends and a lot of free periods. If the rain had been on for a few days at a stretch, it could also mean no school, hot pakoras at home, games with the family and television.
It was the same this morning too. In distant Delhi, distant geographically from the place called home in my childhood and further still from the home I go back to today, and distant too from the person I was then to the person I am now, the morning showers bring back the same scenes. A two-room flat on a first floor house, a bigger house a few years later, with a beautiful garden outside my window....the smell of the wet earth was the same throughout and is the same today.
I reach out to pull my favourite blanket from my childhood over my face and laze a while longer when the raindrops on the window in front of me create a haze. I can smell my mom's cooking, hot coffee brewing in the kitchen, nauseating me, even as lovely hot breakfast gnaws at my hungry stomach. I open one eye to call out for my brother sleeping next to me and realise the gas stove in my kitchen hasn't been switched on in the past few weeks. And my brother is probably handling a shift at his workplace miles away. The only smell is of the trash I have forgotten to turn out for the third day in succession fighting with the fresh air struggling to coeme in through the barred window and from under the door.
I wake up, let the air in, let the morning in, let my present in, and stand watching the trees sway in the breeze. I loved that morning long ago, I love this morning too and no matter where tomorrow dawns, it shall also be mine and I shall love it too.