There is an animal inside every man, which occasionally reveals itself. Thankfully there's isn't a man inside every animal, therefore rapes are an unknown phenomenon in the remainder of the animal kingdom (as far as I know and that's not very far). Ever since man has become conscious of the environment around himself, he has sought the company of animals. Animals that helped him in his work, guarded his belongings, kept pests away, entertained him or animals that just looked good.
Animals will do better without man meddling in their affairs, but man without animals wouldn't have achieved all that he has. Leafing through RK Narayan's autobiography 'My Days' (a fresh copy which I picked up after a serious bout of bargaining on my Sunday haunt of Delhi's Daryaganj for Rs. 20) I related to his lack of success with pets during his early childhood. When an animal or bird (or whatever) is with us, alive and breathing, it forms a part of our lives. But when it departs we mourn a little, get on with our lives and perhaps procure a new replacement.
Whenever I think of pets, I think cats. Those arrogant and ungrateful but nevertheless adorable creatures. My childhood was full of them and an odd mongrel. One winter morning, she and her little kittens lay splattered on the asphalt. Perhaps a truck ran over them. The mongrel persisted for many years until his euthanasia. A decade lapsed and mice became a serious menace in our household. My aunt who had four generations of felines under her roof, spared two kittens.
Sarangi (a musical instrument) and Madan (the god of love), the brother and sister duo who fought like a married couple came into our lives. Madan being the man he loitered around, paying occasional visits and Sarangi got busy warding off and welcoming prospective suitors and tending the litters resulting from those nocturnal rendezvous. My mother got busy distributing them to unwilling neighbours. But some toms occasionally remained unclaimed and continued to spend wintry nights beneath the quilts of my brother and me.
I had seen Sarangi chasing away full grown dogs to protect her kittens and when they were given away she peed on the beds and the sofas in retaliation. Someone killed her and Madan ran way. Sarangi's offspring Motu (the fat one) and Kalu (the black one) lingered for sometime and then followed Madan's pawsteps. After a lull of six months came Champaklal, a tom with the arrogance of a lion. Our home seemed too small a den for him and off he went to explore the world outside.
My mother went back to purchasing rat poison and our home never remained the same. Especially with stinking dead mice stuck in unreachable crevices.
I Love My Dog
I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through.
All he asks from me is the food to give him strength
All he ever needs is love and that he knows he’ll get
So, I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through.
All the pay I need comes shining through his eyes
I don’t need no cold water to make me realize that.
I love my dog as much as I love you
But you may fade, my dog will always come through.
- Cat Stevens (aka Yusuf Islam)
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Men would have happily remained men, but then came marriage - a social conspiracy to deprive a man of his individualistic trait.
Marriage like ice cream comes in multiple flavours. Some interesting but almost non-existent, others boring but prevalent. The reigning flavours in our nation of a billion plus burgeoning population are only two - Love or Arranged. Take your pick.
Most opt to get it arranged - those who have loved and lost, others who haven't loved at all. They say get married first with a convented and homely, tall, fair and beautiful girl with matching horoscope, topped with a hefty dowry. Love automatically will follow. If not, lust will definitely keep the family name alive. Unbelievable as it may sound; most of such marriages have withstood the tests of time (Ignoring the occasional dowry deaths).
If you have that adventurous streak, then love with your spouse can precede the nuptial bond. Mismatched tongues, castes, horoscopes, temperaments, likes and dislikes. But somehow two individuals happen to fall in love and even contemplate marriage, fight parental opposition, societal restrictions etc. etc. And curse each other for the remainder of their wedded life.
Or there's always the third flavour. The premarital love gets converted into marital union getting the love factor fixed through the mechanism of arrangement. Thereby making it more acceptable to all the involved parties and the conservative aunts. But such marriages do not inspire many a filmmaker. It's ice cream without the crunchy cone.
I'll be spoilt for choices when my mother will ask me, "Do you have someone in mind, or should we start looking for a suitable match?" But will also have to choose my flavour before the shop closes and lap it up before it melts.
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I had heard many an anecdote about the rest of India wondering about the existence of places in North-eastern India. I in my ignorance about the knowledge of 'mainland' Indians thought them to be concocted ones. How could an educated citizen not be aware of the existence of not only a capital city but also of a whole state?
On a rainy Independence Day - 15 August 2001, I accompanied by my brother took the early morning train from Bhopal to Sanchi. My brother was downcast seeing the overcast skies. His photographs might not turn out well and the rain could damage his equipment. I was excited with the prospect of seeing the pictures from my school history books come to life. Braving the rain, minus an umbrella we made it to the ticket window.
The elderly gentleman behind the grilled window looked at me through his thick rimmed glasses and enquired in English, "Where have you come from?" "Shillong," I replied. He handed me two tickets and asked for a price many times higher than the displayed entry fee. "Shouldn't it be Rs. 20 for two tickets?" I asked. "Can't you read the board outside? The rates for foreigners are higher," the ticket seller growled.
"Par hum to Indian hain? (But we are Indians)," I protested in Hindi. "Hindi seekh lene se koi Indian nahin ho jata! (Learning Hindi doesn't make one an Indian)" came the smart reply. At this point by brother brandished his Government of India identity card. "But you said you are from Ceylon?" the man asked apologetically.
"Shillong not Ceylon!"
"Woh kahan hain? (Where's that)"
"Meghalaya"
"Woh kahan hain?"
"Assam ke paas (Near the state of Assam)"
"To bolo na Assam se ho, kab se Ceylon, Ceylon kya kar rahe ho (Then why don't you say you're from Assam, why are you saying Shillong, Shillong)."
"No arguments," I thought.
This was just the beginning of my encounters with my geographically challenged fellow citizens. And I felt grateful to that pavement vendor in Bilaspur who on discovering my hometown exclaimed, "Lovely hill station. I would like to visit it sometime, once I save enough money."
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It's that time of the year when mother Durga embarks on her annual vacation, family and pets in tow. The hills in autumn seem greener; the streams sparkle a little more. A thousand miles away from home, in a land somewhat alien I can't smell festivity in the air. The conch shells and the drumbeats reverberate in the nostalgic realm. I yearn for the doe-eyed beauties uneasy in their crisp sarees. My ears search for the strains of songs in the tongue I called my own.
They say this is a big city. It celebrates festivals of all hues. There are more than 10 million souls cramped in here, but at this time of the year I feel alone, all alone. It's a time of togetherness of bonding. In my little hill town I knew almost everybody, here in this metropolis all faces seem unfamiliar. With whom shall I share my excitement? To whom shall I narrate my loneliness?
Today is Mahalaya, the day of invocation of goddess Durga in her Mahisasurmardini form (the slayer of the demon Mahisasur). The beginning of the ten days of festivity. My father didn't wake me up at the crack of dawn to listen to Birendra Krishna Bhadra's oratorio (set to Pankaj Mallick's music) on All India Radio. I listened to an MP3 version on my PC instead.
It is of course a religious occasion, but it's not the gods that I miss, it is the people and the atmosphere. They might celebrate it here, but I don't feel at home, a home I've left a thousand miles behind. Memories that I'll cherish forever.
Oratorio invoking the goddess Durga by Birendra Krishna Bhadra [04:56 MP3 2.26 MB 64 kbps]
Update: Links to the complete version of Mahisasurmardini is available here. (September, 22, 2006)
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"What do you want to be when you grow up?" - The second most common question which bored grownups put before clueless kids. The first of course is - "What is your 'good' name?" Pestered kids like me would come up with a new ambition at regular intervals to lend some variety. In my early years, I wanted to be a grocer because my infant belief was that grocers never needed to purchase anything. Slowly as the lure of the lucre dawned on me, I switched my loyalties to the bank manager. Again addiction to action movies made me opt for another vocation - the army. With time and maturity (?) the fighting spirit died out.
But the magic of the moving pictures accompanied with sound remained ingrained. I wanted to make movies. My friends amused me demanding lead roles. Some of the nasty ones wanted villainous roles with a few rape scenes (at that time only flowers, birds or fireplaces symbolised copulating couples on celluloid and only villains had the liberty). But education ruined all my plans. I started off to become a geographer, went three-fourths of the way in economics and finally landed up becoming what my blogger profile says.
Filmmaking is too uncertain a profession and I wouldn't definitely land up being the next Ritwik Ghatak, Mrinal Sen or Satyajit Ray. That's what my father a connoisseur of the art house stuff felt. He and the vast enormity of my paternal and maternal family extensions felt that I should rather attempt for what is the ultimate dream of the dowry-demanding, bride-burning, female-foetus-killing Indian heartland - the Indian Administrative Service. For better or worse I never attempted that and nor did I fill up the forms for the film institute.
The desire still lingers. But today, nobody asks me - "What did I want to become?"
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