Reading, writing and more

SCHERAZADE

2010-08-12T10:06:00.000-07:00

SCHEHERAZADE”S FINAL STORY

Under the arcane of paraffin lamps
Scheherazade began her thousand oneth story

When I came a thousand nights ago
I was a child woman
After stories merged into stories
And characters left the cocoon of my memories
I am no more a child

Before I came
I sat on the lap of my lover
Beneath the almond tree
Which shed its leaves
Into the stream
As narrow and silvery as my anklets
And my weight had filled us with light

After this final story
That I shall keep half untold
I shall return
To find strangers on every face
That dwells in those huts
Which grow like cysts beneath the steppes

Oh Sultan
I return as a strange woman
After three and a half years
With not a lap to call my own
………………………………..

CHANDINI SANTOSH

STEM CELL THERAPY

2010-06-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

STEM CELL THERAPY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

A few months back, Lisa Ray, top Canadian model of Indian origin, resurfaced on the covers of many news magazines with the stunning revelation about her rare cancer affliction and the cutting edge stem cell regenerative procedures she was undergoing for the same in the US with encouraging results. Having been a fan of Lisa ray’s unusually magnetic looks and personality I sat glued to the reads.

Regenerative procedures using stem cells has quietly taken over all other modern procedures in medical as well as surgical sections. Though the terminology may sound alien, the system itself is simple. As we know all cells are derived from stem cells. In an adult human, these cells lie dormant inside the bone marrow, in the cavities of the eyes, under the epidermis and inside one’s stomach. They can divide and that too very rapidly into cells to regenerate almost any part of our body and brain. I know: This sounds like magic or at the most a miracle. But that is what any advanced technology looks like in the beginning. It is indistinguishable from magic.

When antibiotics emerged to combat bacterial diseases, it had an aura of miracle to it. Penicillin was hailed as a wonder drug. With just one shot of Penicillin doctors could cure sexually transmitted diseases like Gonorrhea and syphilis. The same shot could heal infected wounds, pneumococcal infections, skin lesions and many other diseases which could not have been controlled otherwise. With the discovery of radium the medical fraternity achieved near miracle status as x-rays could ‘see’ through human body. With the advent of MRI scans each and every part human anatomy could be visualized, including even the bones and the marrow lying underneath it.

Stem Cell regenerative procedures are the latest entrant in a long line of modern medical discoveries. If a decade ago, nobody knew much about these nano cells, today we realize that there is almost nothing that cannot be tackled with stem cells. Take cardiomegaly for instance. This is a condition where the heart has enlarged to such an extent that normal pumping of blood to all parts of the body become impossible. One of the symptoms of this cardiac disorder is a rapid pulse rate, almost double than normal. Till now the only option available to a cardiac patient was to get a transplant done. There is renewed hope for such patients. AIIMS began clinical trials using adult stem cells on cardiomyopathic patients with encouraging results. Even in patients with tissue damage following acute heart attacks, where even bypass surgery seemed to do no good, and stem cells have begun to show their magic, though doctors caution that it is not magic yet.

When it comes to liver disorders, stem cell therapy gas attained magical status. Even earlier we know that much could be achieved in the liver as it is one of the most regenerative friendly organ in the human body. With the latest techniques involving cell rejuvenation, even heavily cirrhotic liver could be made ebullient.

There is not a single area of medical process that stem cell therapy cannot be deployed. India is in the forefront of such advancement, primarily due to the Union Government’s proactive measures. If traditionally scientists could only do research work in science but could not translate it into clinical use, much could be achieved. In the coming decade regenerative treatment is said to take off into brilliant possibilities. Fortunately for India stem cell research has not been derailed over ethical issues concerning embryonic stem cells as it had been in the US. Former US President George Bush had stopped all government funding for embryonic stem cell research as conservative religious groups argued that life cannot be destroyed to save other lives. Barrack Obama has overturned this law with the argument that embryonic stem cells hardly constitute lives and also many lives were saved. Embryonic cells are the most powerful cells in the lineup of other stem cells. The cells in an ovum are harvested within less than a week after fertilization takes place. They have the ability to develop into any of the two hundred odd types of cells needed by the body. The promise of possibilities is too large to be posted.

At one point I began wondering as to why this advanced technology has had few detractors. In my view this is so because, ironically enough the terminology of Regenerative Therapy sounds dangerously similar to what pseudo sciences and its practitioners use. It is the ‘follow the heart’ kind of verbiage that strikes a chord in people. Or else people have not sufficiently understood its implications as well as its moral or ethical complications. It is better so.

………………..

MALAYALA MANORAMA

2010-05-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

The Metro Manorama featured me yesterday. This was a better write up, I feel. Not much of senti stuff.

WOMEN IN LOVE

2010-05-18T05:48:00.000-07:00

WOMEN IN LOVE

You have strewn gold and coral beads
All over the floor
My mind slips and wavers over them

You throw words at me
At point blank range
You thump your delicate chest
With long flute like fingers
He loves me: You say
Me

What can I say
Except that those are dangerous words
That he has said to you
Not even a handful
But irrefutably dangerous

Like a desert tree
In a tobacco brown landscape
I stand at the tip of this sandstorm
My bones breaking

Yes, soft words do all that
They break your bones

……………………………

ORIGINAL SKETCH

2010-05-06T21:24:00.000-07:00

ORIGINAL SKETCH

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

At present
I have just a simple sketch
Not the original
It’s a bit hazy
With layers of time on them

I sit on these broken laterite steps
Of an ancestral pond
With my legs on creeping waters
Recounting
The seven weapons in my armory,
Reconsidering the eighth:
The one about retracting,
Withdrawing from the battlefield

As dust rises over this grotesque battle
And your voice fades
With each syllable
My uncouth hair spreading
On the mossy green
As my face dissolves in water
To retrieve the original sketch

……………..

LOVE IN THE TIMES OF RAIN

2010-04-30T10:31:00.000-07:00

LOVE IN THE TIMES OF RAIN

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

We married in the rains,
The pitter patter of rain
Constant and tireless

I came in from the rains
While you smoked a beedi
You had a caught in the act smile

We were young thighed
Yours long and muscular
Mine just opened fruit
Avocado like,
Hard on the outside
Deep and glowing inside

Time is a never ending Neanderthal river
Slow where it begins
Picking up momentum
Where it falls from precipice to precipice
Down to the ocean
In a relentless downpour

……………………………..

This pix was clicked when Santosh was very ill. Inspite of all that, he saw patients. A part of the clinic can be seen.

UNDER THE POMEGRANATE TREE

2010-04-26T10:58:00.000-07:00

UNDER THE POMEGRANATE TREE

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

In the faint light of dusk
We sat under the pomegranate tree
In our backyard
Me and my friend,
Our mouths reddened with its seeds
Comparing our fruity breasts
While television screens flickered
In our homes

……………………………..

STRANGER THAN FICTION

2010-04-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

STRANGER THAN FICTION

One Mr. Rehman went into a medical shop and strangely felt elated when the workers stood around respectfully. He had never experienced recognition like this ever before. He presumed it could have been his natty way of dressing that did the trick. He was vacationing in his hometown. He worked in Dubai.

Wherever he went, people showed concern and respect. One morning while he walked down the congested roads of Mahe, his wife’s hometown, he was accosted by a drunk.
This early doctor? If you had told me I would have delivered a pint bottle home. All hope of being nattily dressed drained from Rehman’s handsome face.
But I do not drink. He replied quite miffed by the drunk.
Oh come on, doctor, as if we don’t know!
But I am not a doctor.
Oh ok ok. The man chuckled.

Thinking that he hadn’t heard right, Rehman stood dazed on the footpath looking distastefully at the receding back of the offending man. He decided then and there that this matter had to be looked into before he returned to Dubai.
Rehman hastened to his schoolmate to air his woes and unlock the puzzle that seemed to follow him around.
His classmate looked at him in wonder and piped up.
You know, you resemble a famous doctor over here.
Tell me, Rehman said, all ears, his antenna up.
You resemble Dr. Santosh.
Who?
Dr. Santosh.

On a cold November evening in 2004, Rehman came to our clinic. Few patients remained. As soon as he walked across, my heart pounded. Am I seeing doubles, I asked myself? Of course this couldn’t be true. I kept my head down. Our young pharmacist felt the same thoughts coursing through her mind, but unlike me she voiced her doubt.
Somebody resembling Sir, just walked past, madam, she said.
You noticed, I spoke gingerly.
In fact the man who accompanies him is my father’s friend, she said, with hope spreading over her face.

Both of us were still in shock when Mr. Rehman came in shyly and asked to see the doctor. I made as if to write out a chit for him before he entered the clinic. I remember I clumsily held my head down and pretended to write busily though my mind raced against all manner of possibilities.

I am not sick, he blurted out. I just want to see the doctor, Rehman said. Without waiting for my reply he barged into the clinic and what do you know, Rehman and Santosh stood looking at each other for a second before both of them broke into laughter.
I have been wanting to see you since long, he said.
Last time I came during my holidays I was aware people were scrutinizing me, but this time I was most sure that something most strange was happening in my life. That is when my friend here told me about you.
They had the same build, complexion, features and most importantly the same lustrous and full head of hair. They were the same age as well. Though Santosh was ill at the time, he had not yet lost his looks or hair, even after the twelve cycles of chemotherapy that had traumatized his body.

Mr. Rehman had brought with him several photographs where the resemblance was most striking. He took some photographs of Santosh with him.

The most enjoyable and hilarious part came later. We asked him into our living room and as he walked in my mother stared at him happily and exclaimed.
See you are now walking as if nothing has happened. I had told you there was nothing wrong with your legs.
Mr. Rehman smiled. But as soon as he opened his mouth and started talking, my mother became flustered. It was not Santosh, her son-in-law speaking.

I accompanied Mr. Rehman to the gate while Santosh watched us from his clinic. By then people had crowded around the clinic to see ‘doctor’ walking with abandon. The local ‘cowboy’ who grazed his cows wherever he pleased came down the road. He saw Rehman walking beside me and shouted to the shopkeeper.
I knew it, I knew doctor would walk someday.
That’s not the doctor, but someone who resembles him.
He threw an unprintable abuse at the shopkeeper. While went after the cows, he bowed to Rehman who could only look down in disbelief.

Dear readers, none of you could even trace any difference. Though to be honest, in reality they looked even more similar, if that could be possible. But their voices were different and they were two entirely different people. Mr. Rehman kept in touch till Santosh died.

He lives in Dubai.

…………………………….

In the second pix, it is Rehman you see, with his wife and only daughter. The black and white pix show Santosh with his first wife. The third one shows Santosh and me. Now tell me whether you have ever heard such a galvanizing fact which is stranger than most fiction? I am sure you haven’t. If at all you have experienced anything similar, do narrate.

THE STORY BEHIND PHOTOGRAPHS

2010-04-17T23:06:00.000-07:00

THE STORY BEHIND PHOTOGRAPHS

If photographs could tell a story, this one would grab you by the neck. It has drama, pathos and the essence of life. As I have often told you that life itself is amazing at all times. There is nothing more miraculous than life. And nothing more poignant too!

I am most sure that some of you can recognize Santosh and me in these photographs. The others in those momentous photographs are - Santosh with his first wife, (Do not be alarmed, they were legally divorced, and we in turn had a legal arranged marriage), with first wife and daughter, with his friend, with his classmates, both doctors, wearing the first shirt I bought for him and alone among palms.

I remember that I was most agitated when I first saw the photographs featuring his ex wife, though I could hardly say I was not aware of the fact, though some crucial facts were not revealed to me. I came to know of these later, in fact as soon as we were married, on our first night itself. A daughter, I remember thinking, so what am I doing here!

I did not show my agitation dear friends, I have been prepared by nature for all emergencies. I was unimaginably raw, docile and melodrama – free. I believe, at the time I must have been fatalistic as well, which thankfully I am not at present. So when Santosh showed no signs of taking me for a honeymoon, I reassured myself that since he had one, there was no point in having another. What does it matter?

I would have made him feel guilty if I had harangued him with honeymoon woes. How does it matter that I was robbed off these exquisitely happy days in life? When I see newly married couples walking around parks hand in hand, I look happily at them. I smile back when they do.

So it was that we came to be buddies more and a married couple less. He spoke to me as he would to his close friend, inasmuch as sharing his intimate details. For example, he told me all about his girlfriends, in fact I met up with two of them, who in turn were nonplussed at my carefree smile and chatter. Yes, we sized up each other all the same. To be honest, they had their share of glamorous looks and love, and I had immense confidence, which in turn made up for my lack of good looks. I would even joke with Santosh that if he had deigned to marry any of them, I would have been spared this entire trauma.

But a wife is a different proposition altogether. First, second, third or whatever. It was most painful for both of us when we met under unique circumstances. (She is married and leads a life of her own.) I am caught up in this frenzy of remembering. She carried her son in her arms while I gaped at them bewildered.

No this is my son, said she.
And my son lies buried in a small hole beneath peepal trees.

……………………

This, My Land...

2010-04-09T09:25:00.000-07:00

This, My Land...

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

This, my land,
He said:
His city hands inside jeans pocket,
Where my grandfather’s bones
Have been laid to rest

As the stone crusher moved in
With yellow arms
Scouring red earth,
Mixing blood and yearning
Death and salvation

The trees have been felled
And taken care off
The avuncular contractor
Rubs his stubby hands together
Now being chiseled into carved doors
And wide windowsills
(This in an aside)

Those majestic teak trees
With brush drop of flowers
The cashews with grating leaves
The pepper vines encircling the jackfruit trees
And the avocados that made you diabetic for life
I don’t go near them, Sir
Health hazard
The coconut palms
In their circular biblical bed
The arecanut trees
Mating in the wind
Not much produce, Sir
(Aloud, tongue in cheek)
They are mowing down the guava Sir
With succulent yellow fruits
Hanging beside the stone quarry

The laterite stone quarry, Sir?
It has been leveled
With all those yellow temple stones
Made good use of them, the little bastards!
(Another aside)

He knelt to pick
A blood red pebble of earth
With a wiry calcium deposit around it
(Some cheap sentiments)
And superstitions, no doubt

He smiled
As pickaxes bounced back
From fossilized bones
Dozens of them
Bones upon bones
The dead upon dead

You planted your story on them
And history shot up

………………….

The painting that you see above has been stolen. So be it!

THE MATHRUBHUMI WRITE UP

2010-03-25T00:52:00.000-07:00

MATHRUBHUMI WRITE UP

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Today an article on me appeared on Page 3 of The Mathrubhumi Daily along with a sensitive pix in place. It has made my day, though my friends have not liked the sentimental slant of the article. As you know, I am neither sentimental (well, not too much!) nor pessimistic. I would not have reached here with these negative tags on my shoulders. I am a chronic optimist, living life to the full, as much as is possible, given the milieu I live in. I do not dare to be different, my writing does it for me. Bringing in all the difference that there is.

I am also not pensive by nature. I cannot sit solemnly for long. I enjoy life's vagaries. My family and friends would tell you how strong a person I am. I do not give up easily. And why would I?

But yes, lots of solitude does rain in through my windows, pigeons make neighborly sounds on the windowsill, the wind moans in as the sights and smells of life seep up to me. After all if life is not lived, how could you possibly write?

MY FATHER

2010-03-20T22:16:00.000-07:00

MY FATHER

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

My father was the eldest of ten children. He was soft spoken, mild mannered and well educated. All these qualities made him stand out amongst his siblings.

After Matriculation he pursued his studies at Mysore from where he received a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering. After an unfruitful stint in the Indian Navy, he joined the National Physical laboratories, New Delhi as a Mechanical Draughtsman. He would tell me hilarious stories of his naval days. It seems one could not sport a moustache without growing a beard. Or else, one had to be clean shaven. Being a Keralite, where a premium is put on a moustache, my father could not forgo his moustache and also could not comply with the beard issue. He walked out with his moustache intact but without a job. He was thirty years old and had twelve people to look after. None of his brothers or sisters was good at academics. All of them were school dropouts.

My father had an uncanny knack of knowing where vacancies lay, which placed him at an advantage. He traveled to New Delhi much before Independence to take up his post at the NPL, from where he retired in the seventies.

He was as different from his siblings as he was different from other men of his time. He treated his wife with respect and affection. They are the most companionable couple I have ever seen in my lifetime. Though mild men tend to be labeled as hen pecked, my father was far from being so. It could also have been due to my mother who was milder than him.

I firmly believe that this difference arose from his education and travel. As you can see from the photograph clicked at one of his numerous nephews, he looks different, mainly because he has a confident smile on his face, which is absent on the faces of his younger siblings, some of whom, you will notice look much older than him. Except for the voluptuous aunt in the middle, all of them sport a nonchalant tired-of-life expression. The aunt in the middle, to whom I am told I closely resemble, is a most ordinary woman and most unlike me, physical resemblances apart, though we resemble in some other ways as well. Both of us are childless, though we had delivered a baby boy each, who died even before we left hospital.

My father inculcated in us a strong sense of rationality and yearning for scientific temperament. No religious sentiments were forced on us, in fact we were brought up in a world totally devoid of any religious symbols. As far as I can remember, we did not frequent temples except as a tourist or as an onlooker. My father did not allow gods and goddesses in his house. He placed a premium on rationale. I remember reading E. M. Kovoor at a young age under my father's influence and being hypnotised by new thoughts. Ironically enough, my father had his idiosyncracies, which were not in concurrence with his rational approach to life. He avidly read the Stars Foretell column and practised Homoeopathy, which according to me subjugates everything about reason.

Though I am much like him, I make sure I do not fall into idiosyncratic beliefs that are which take me away from being a rational person and is also anathema to me. I also learn from mistakes.

.......................

LAKE

2010-03-19T09:04:00.000-07:00

LAKE

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

This frozen lake
And the leafless trees spread around,
This winter:

Let me turn my back
On this picture post card
As a musty wind flutters
Over breaking waters
…………..

APRICOT TREES

2010-03-11T23:15:00.000-08:00

APRICOT TREES

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Where are those apricot trees
Breaking into flowers,
Beneath which
We had walked hand in hand,

Rows and rows of trees
With musk settling on them,
These eternal flowers
Rain down on me
While you pass by.

Only fools have nine lives
My love,
We have just this one,
With murmorous shades in between.

...........................................

LEAVING

2010-03-07T10:09:00.000-08:00

LEAVING

When we left our house
We left sad oblongs on the walls,
Lightened in time
Where our photographs hung

Golden lizards
Had laid transparent eggs,
Our echoes had grown
More than our voices
And memories lay hunched
In dark cavities

………………..

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN"S CANCER WARD

2010-03-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

ALEXANDER SOLZHENITSYN’s CANCER WARD

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s

CANCER WARD

Alexander Solzhenitsyn has been called the only Russian classic by many, repudiated by none. His works come out of the depths the soul, from the bone marrow, to buoyantly fight every human indignity, tyranny and oppression of freedom. If his epoch making novel, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ was a massive historic account of the Soviet secret Police, and a shattering account of the Soviet Penal system, his earlier semi autobiographical work, ‘Cancer Ward’ is the celebrated novel of life in the Soviet Union during Stalin’s Purge, when millions were killed, thrown into labor camps or exiled.

Solzhenitsyn, born in 1918, served for eleven years in a concentration camp for speaking against the tyranny of Stalin – an experience which provided the raw material for his magnum opus, ‘The Gulag Archipelago’. He was a cancer patient in the mid – 1950’s, from which sprung forth the cataclysmic parable of ‘Cancer Ward.’

As Soren Kierkegaard observed that the union of a great artist and a great theme constitutes ‘the fortunate in the historical process, the divine conjunction of its forces, the high tide of historic time.’ The union of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and the theme of the concentration camps produced the masterpiece of the twentieth century, while the unfreedom suffered by the artists of the Stalinist Soviet Era produced what Albert Camus deemed impossible, the compulsion of the human imagination to participate in the agony and the murders of millions that has been the distinguishing feature of 20th century.

‘Cancer Ward’ can be read purely as a literary work, without the reader ever knowing the circumstances in which it was written, without recognizing the larger picture that the book rounds up, of the excruciatingly totalitarian regime under which Russian writers, intellectuals and artists worked, and were finally silenced if they raised their voices against oppression. It is the enclosed world of the damned. The Purge by Stalin was a systematic removal of all dissenting voices, which left the rest of the citizens, deathly silent. Solzhenitsyn metaphorized cancer to the lack of freedom in the Russia of his times. But it is the sheer magic of Solzhenitsyn’s writing that catches the reader by the throat in a vice like grip. There is not a single question about life that remains unanswered, not a single human situation that remains unfulfilled. What unfolds is the tragic – comedy of life. There is a timeless quality of ‘Cancer Ward’ is that the allegory has the agility of reality to cover up its tracks of metaphor.

The story unfolds in a Cancer Hospital in Uzbekistan in 1955 in the Stalinist Soviet union. The three months that the main character Kostoglotov spends in the men’s ward of a cancer hospital forms the background of the story. Each patient in the ward has a tumor at different parts of his body, the tumor itself symbolizing the malady that has gripped the society. It explores the moral responsibility – symbolized by the patients’ malignant tumors – of those unfortunate men and women implicated in the suffering of their fellow citizens during Stalin’s Great Purge. The patients in the men’s ward are also a cross section of the existing Russia which has numbed the citizens with the oppressive nature of a totalitarian society. There is Rusanov, the government employee, ‘the insider’ who believes that no other means could be employed to rule a country other than complete subjugation. In his pontific manner, he reiterates that a civilized society can only survive through a rule by the gun, allowing no dissent, no individual freedom to its citizens, though there is a clear demarcation between the freedom of the ruled and freedom of those who rule. The voices against the system are brought out, at times through ruminations by the main characters as well as through conversations between them. It is a literary diagnosis of a problem.

‘Cancer Ward’ is also the story of men who are tortured by the vicissitudes of the disease and of the women who treat them. The doctors are almost entirely made up of women, for the male population has been reduced to a minority, the tangent after effects of the Second World War and the ensuing Communist Regime which further brought down the axe on all unsuspecting males, either through exiling them or herding a vast number of humanity into concentration camps, where people endured inhuman conditions. Especially touching is the teenage lovers caught up in the frenzy of cancer and the prospect of death around the corner, but like all young lovers, they believe in the potency of love over death. The young girl suffering from breast cancer and about to undergo mastectomy pleads to her teen lover to savor the beauty of her breasts before the knife of the surgeon carves it out of her body.

The rulers took liberties for granted. A telling scene is where Rusanov’s wife empties garbage right in the middle of the road, even while Kostoglotov yelps back at them in impotent rage.

Shulubin tells Kostoglotov:

"At least you lied less, do you understand. At least you changed less. . . You were jailed. But we were forced to stand and applaud the sentences that had been pronounced. Not just to applaud, but to demand execution, to demand it."

Towards the end of the novel, Kostoglotov, like Solzhenitsyn himself was forced into exile under Article 58 which dealt with the so called counter revolutionaries, realizes that the damage done to him and Russia was too great and that there will be no healing no normal life even after Stalin has gone.

Kostoglotov undergoes two potential romances in the hospital, one with Zoya, the nurse, the attraction mainly physical, and a more serous one with Vera Gangart, a doctor who is bent on saving his life, even to the extent of using hormone therapy on him which would render him impotent for life. Vera Gangart whom Kostoglotov fondly calls Vega, a name given to her by her fiancée who was killed in the Second World War, and who has never married. He imagines that he might ask Vega to be his wife. His feelings for Vega are strong and seem to be reciprocated.
In the last chapter, when he is discharged from the hospital, Kostoglotov wanders about the city. He visits the zoo, where he witnesses the Macaque Rhesus monkey who has been blinded by an evil man who threw tobacco dust into the animal’s eyes. Kostoglotov proceeds write to his young friend at the cancer ward.
‘Even supposing I took their side and had the power, I would still not want to break into the cage and liberate them…Deprived of their home surroundings they had lost the power of rational freedom. It would only make things harder for them, suddenly set free.’ Telling lines these. Solzhenitsyn’s work is a broad and all encompassing literary diagnosis of the diseased system, a tumor that grows under tyranny.

In the end he decides to against going to see either woman. His cancer treatment has left him impotent just as imprisonment and exile have taken the life out of him. He feels that he has nothing to offer a woman and decides to face life alone.

He writes to Vega:

You may disagree, but I have a prediction to make: even before you drift into the indifference of old age, you will come to bless this day, the day you did not commit yourself to share my life ... Now that I am going away ... I can tell you quite frankly: even when we were having the most intellectual conversations and I honestly thought and believed everything I said, I still wanted all the time, all the time, to pick you up and kiss you on the lips.
So try to work that out.
And now, without your permission, I kiss them.

‘ A literary event of the first magnitude…by Russia’s greatest living prose writer’ TIME

>……………………………………………………………………………………………….

Read Solzhenitsyn' works and be mesmerised by the power of great literature. read in this century or the coming centuries, these works and words will remain etched on the pages of history, as human situations does not change though time drops down from every sphere of life.

DEATH OF AN INFANT

2010-02-21T09:34:00.000-08:00

DEATH OF AN INFANT

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

On a cold November night I gave birth to a baby boy at a private hospital in Mangalore. The child was the first grandchild of my parents. I was under the care of Santosh's Professor of Gynaecology, an eminent name in South India.

Do not let nobody tell you that labour pain is a casual matter, it is not. Not that I had a difficult delivery, I did not. It was most normal, no two ways on that.

From the room I was in, I could view the sea and the rows of cedar trees with wind in their leaves. They would bend from waist onwards, all at the same time. I remember that the nights were cold and prussian blue. I also remember that I was not ready for the child. My son too was not ready for me. He could have sensed me. Perhaps. Just perhaps.

We struggled to adjust to each other. Clearly my mind was not with him, though to give where credit is due, I could say that he tried his best to draw his lifeline from me.

He died on the fifth day in his tiny crib, his nose bled. It was certified as cot death.

Since I am not ruled by perhapses, I cannot think up any number of thoughts on the same. It happened, that is all.

But I was not prepared by Santosh's reaction. His sorrow could not be assuaged. He wept like a child on my lap, we howled like sloppy children who were facing the biggest loss of their lives. But we were not to know all this while it happened.

Perhaps the tiny death brought us together like nothing else did.

....................

MEMORY FLOOD

2010-02-17T03:37:00.000-08:00

MEMORY FLOOD

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

I have torn away
Your memories
Llike an old muslin cloth
And carried them to the sea last evening
To be thrown into the sea
Where endless sand
And slanting palms
Get wet in the rains.

Between a hysteric sea
And a hypnotic devil
The muslin shreds
Have stuck to my mouth
And peripatetic soul.

...........

This poem is from my latest anthology, I ME MYSELF.
copyright @ Unisun Publications, Bangalore

FORGOTTEN NAME

2010-02-13T22:23:00.000-08:00

FORGOTTEN NAME

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

The last time
We visited the sea,
I remember
It was swollen with gray water:
Afraid to lash at the shores

You called me
By a forgotten name from the past
As time peeled in layers
All round us

I sit at this hollow beach
While decades shed their snake skins,
And wisps of memories
Land in my lap,
As the sea withdraws below my feet

……………………

AYAAN HIRSI ALI's INFIDEL

2010-02-12T02:52:00.000-08:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

AYAAN HIRSI ALI’s

INFIDEL

INFIDEL is a pellucid memoir of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, born and brought up in Somalia in a traditional Muslim family. Her story is astonishing even while being profound.

Raised in a strict Muslim family and extended clan, Hirsi Ali survived civil war, female circumcision involving genital mutilation, brutal beatings, an adolescence as a devout believer, the rise of Muslim brotherhood, and life in four countries under dictatorships. She escaped from a forced marriage and sought asylum in Holland, where she fought for the rights of Muslim women and the reform of Islam, earning her the enmity of reactionary Muslims all over the world. The journey from being an orthodox believer to a champion of Women’s empowerment and a staunch atheist – it is one of the most memorable account of a person’s life story. She lives under constant threat from Islamists, yet refuses to be silenced.

Ultimately a celebration of triumph over adversity, Hirsi Ali’s story tells how a bright, curious, dutiful little girl evolves into a pioneering freedom fighter. As Western governments struggle to balance democratic ideals with religious fanaticism, especially in the wake of 9/11, no other book could be more timely or significant. She worked as an interpreter in abortion clinics and shelters for battered women, fleeing from domestic violence. After earning her college degree in political science, she worked for the Labor Party in Holland. She denounced Islam after September 11 terrorist attacks and now champions the cause of Muslim women in Europe, the enlightenment of Islam and security in the West.

A riveting read, INFIDEL should be read by every woman and yes, all men.

………………………

PS: I sketched the arresting face of Ayaan Hirsi Ali as soon as I finished reading her book. I believe I have captured the determination in her eyes.

LAST SONG OF THE SOLDIER

2010-02-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

LAST SONG OF THE SOLDIER

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

As I lie under this gigantic maple tree,
Listening
To my breath fading
With each syllable in time
As these leaves shuffle over me,
Let me remember things past

We had reached the boring topic of love
You my betrothed
Played with the hourglass
On your deft palms
Spilling immeasurable time
Through sand and memories

This act,
This thing between a man and a woman
Which divides time
As before and after
Breeding timelessness.

As the last lights fade
Against a yellow landscape,
And time ends,
I hear footsteps
Near my dazed head
As blood trickles into blood
And my breath fades.

.....................

PS: The pix above shows the handsome couple Sudeep Parambath and his wife Siji Rehana, perfectly complimented professionally as well. Sudeep is an architect and Siji, an Interior designer.
Siji can be contacted - sijirehana@gmail.com

They are clicked at my brother's beautiful house on the outskirts of Bangalore on New Year Eve.

TELEVISION INTERVIEW on SATURDAY 6th FEBRUARY

2010-02-03T01:49:00.000-08:00

The MANORAMA NEWS Channel will be airing an interview with me on SATURDAY in the 7 - 8am slot, in a tete a tete with Abhilash Nair. Watch me go for it!

Yes, the interview has been defered till SATURDAY morning, as Actor Devan takes precedence over me as his movie 'Yugapurushan releases today. So its tomorrow folks. I know it is a dampner! But such is the nature of things.

So tomorrow it is. Do watch.

THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE

2010-02-01T22:00:00.000-08:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

THE MUSEUM OF INNOCENCE

ORHAN PAMUK

Orhan Pamuk’s latest novel, ‘The Museum of Innocence’ opens on a perfect spring afternoon in 1975. The first paragraph reads like a classic case of reckless passion in collision with Turkey’s bourgeoisie conventions.

It begins thus: ‘It was the happiest moment of my life, though I didn’t know it.’ It is a dissertation of love laced with obsessive passion.

Kemal Basmaci, scion of a wealthy Industrialist family in Istanbul is about to become engaged to Sibel, a suitable woman from his own class, who has already – as Kemal puts it – ‘given me her virginity’, though only because she trusts in his honor as her betrothed. But all dreams of ever happy union crumbles when Kemal falls deliriously in love with a distant cousin of his, a poor relative, the déclassé Fusun Keskin, who is a shop girl working in a boutique. Fusun too deliberately elects to give her virginity to Kemal, entering the taboo realm of Turkish bourgeoisie. Pamuk writes with lyrical passion about the deflowering ceremony juxtaposing images of lambs being slaughtered on the Feast of the Sacrifice. Outside the apartment, all over Istanbul, in every corner, many many lambs are being butchered. Kemal comes to believe that he can have his cake and eat it too. This dichotomy creates a rift between Kemal and the society he moves in. As the engagement between Kemal and Sibel take place, Fusun goes into hiding.

It takes almost a year for Kemal to find the whereabouts of Fusun. But by then it’s too late as Sibel senses Kemal’s withdrawal from her, both emotionally and physically. Though she is sympathetic to the point of defying society, she has already become a culprit of the jaded system of sexual politics that the Turkish society is immersed in. From then on, Kemal’s life becomes a long torment of all consuming passion.

For nine years Kemal finds all manner of excuses to visit the other Istanbul, a house in the impoverished backstreets that Fusun shares with her parents and her childish husband, who has dreams of making it big in the Turkish film industry. As Kemal falls into the middle class pace of life in Istanbul, enjoying the consolation of the dinner table in front of the television, he also begins to drink like a fish, perhaps to anesthetize his passion towards Fusun. Kemal resembles Devdas.

Women in gilded Istanbul do not necessarily want arranged marriages, yet they do no know how to find men on their own either. Kemal the protagonist and narrator is a gawky and shy thirty year old who has never seen a couple kiss off screen in Turkey. While Turkey’s elite send their daughters to Paris and London on shopping sprees, while also being told in no uncertain terms that they must be virgins on their wedding night, or at least restrain caution albeit discreetly. In the novel we glimpse a Turkey which is torn between an ambition to be liberated, even as it is reluctant to let go of conservatism, mainly of the male chauvinist variety, the brutal model of masculinity prevalent in Turkish culture. Ultimately this makes for an unexpectedly conservative position on Kemal’s (and perhaps on Pamuk’s) part.

Pamuk has described Innocence ‘as anthropology of my own experiences.’ This is obvious as the first narration is taken up by the author himself, a technique Pamuk had experimented with in his earlier work My Name is Red and Snow with panache.

Nine years of obsessive passion also makes Kemal a compulsive collector of objects, the everyday objects of ordinary lives collected and shown in ‘The Museum of Innocence.’
……………………

PS: However much I would like to desist from making these tailpiece remarks, I am forced by habit to look at all reading with a minutely critical eye. As minute as my reading finally is.

Pamuk’s taking over the narrative from his protagonist smacks of gimmick. Like Hitchcock and several Bollywood directors like Subhash Ghai and Karan Johar, Pamuk has an affinity to present himself in most of his novels, which did not jar so much in his earlier works. He promotes himself blatantly in the concluding chapters, reveling in the now famous first line of The New Life, which he says has been bought for an advertising jingle, preening himself in the hallowed status of Turkish elite that he straddles. Out of the mammoth 530 odd pages of the book, more than two hundred pages are devoted to the nightly dinner ceremonies in his girlfriend’s lower middle class household, though some of his narratives are humorous and similar to Marquez.

That Pamuk is actually making a museum comes as a comic faux passé. The many interviews splashed all over also bring on a quirky smile. But let us also not forget the harsh manner in which Turkey treated Pamuk when he aired his scathing remarks on the Armenian genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Kurds. Though he escaped a fatwa, Pamuk has been criticized for misrepresenting the Turkish spirit by the conservative bureaucracy of Turkey.

VIGNETTES OF COLLEGE LIFE

2010-01-27T08:29:00.000-08:00

VIGNETTES OF COLLEGE LIFE

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

The moment we met after decades, we chattered like little humming birds, as though we had parted just yesterday after our quaint and long drawn out byes. That was in college and much water had sped beneath the bridge. We were classmates for three years as undergraduates in the best known college of that era.

Some of us sat on the same bench for three whole years, but parted as easily as we met. Just like that, after having said our byes, in our usual style. We hunted around for autographs, ( I was not much into it, though I penned melodrama stuff on yellow blue and pink tinted paper with relish) we laughed riotously and left innumerable initials of our names etched on wooden desks and doors, which perhaps we should not have. But what is time if it is not stamped on lingering memories? We broke into immeasurably soulful songs, mostly from Hindi movies of the time. We moved to the dusty corners to whisper to our heartthrobs.

Life inside a college campus is like that. When I look back, I realize that our sorrows were minuscule and laughter manifold. The stray Gulmohar trees with orange flame flowers and the gossamer shadows beneath it. The drone of teaching in those dusty classrooms and the grazing cattle in the middle. The dark and lonely library with empty shelves, where I sat reading the ‘Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ many times a year. The wide corridors with hexagonal shaped pillars, from behind which I looked at the grass swaying in the wind on hot afternoons.

All was not as idyllic as we would have loved to believe. The day I joined college, after a hectic homecoming from New Delhi, where my father was employed, there was abrupt violence between the youth wings of two political parties. Violence has spilt out into the open now. Colleges are merely breeding grounds for political jingoism. For more than a decade, violence has been the trademark of our small town, the cradle of Communism.

Perhaps I sound sentimental about college life, which is not as it should be. Fun and lighter moments are the lasting impressions that I have in my memory. But all that in the next edition.

……………………

PS: The pix above show four of us, who shared our lives for three years. From Left to right: Krishna, Veni, Myself and Pravin. Pravin and Veni, as is evident in the pix are married to each other.

The very best to you, my dear friends…

SEVENTY SEVEN LETTERS

2010-01-24T08:27:00.000-08:00

SEVENTY SEVEN LETTERS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Before I left home,
I flung the sheets off the bed,
And shook the mattress

Instead of dust,
Letters flew out
Seventy seven of them
With moth eaten words:
The ones which moths love

On an island - You wrote:
Swimming under the cluster of an archipelago,
Where no memory exists
There my love,
We shall build our sand castle,
Ou house of cards
While water flows above us.

........................

This pix was clicked by my classmate and friend alonside another classmate and friend. Confused? The story behind the pics - next time!

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

2010-01-19T08:17:00.000-08:00

CHARLIE CHAPLIN

BY CHANDINI SANTOSH

My sister took me to see Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Kid’ when I was in school at Delhi. She did not know what she was in for, although I must say she might have had a slight inkling as to what to expect.
I remember that it was a brand new theatre with plush push back seats. I wore a sleeveless lilac frock that my uncle had bought for me and which I grew out of in a matter of months.
As in reading, I watch movies from frame to frame, word to word. As the titles unfolded, you could imagine the excitement that welled inside me. From the moment the movie began till it ended, I was on a roller coaster of laughter. I literally rolled on the red carpets that smelled of newness and life. People seated beside me were aghast at the abandon with which I laughed. My sister must have pulled me back fifty times before the movie finally ended.
She would not hold my hand while we walked back home... I would have loved to hold her grouchy hand, though she walked much ahead of me. My shoes pricked me. The frock tightened over my chest.
The roads milled with traffic. Dusk has an incalculably beautiful way of descending over moving vehicles in a simmering city, as lights began to come on all round us. The colonial lampposts, the flowering trees shedding myriad colored flowers, the cement benches between the trees and the houses on both sides of the road with manicured gardens … I remember that I walked with a limp by the time we reached home.
My sister swore she would never ever take me to the movies, definitely not a comedy, no not again.
I could not wear the shoes again, dear readers, I had grown up. But yes, I still laugh riotously while watching a comedy.

………………..

ON A HIGHWAY

2010-01-10T07:53:00.000-08:00

ON A HIGHWAY

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

At dead of noon
My car braked on the highway
Where your house stood

The dilapidated stone steps
The dark porch
And the darker well

Those droopy flowers
Climbing up trellises
The bucket of water
Descending at breakneck speed
From your mother's calloused hands
As her catarract doused eyes
Rests on mine

No water
Can quench my thirst
My love,
The gash I left at your doorsteps
Remind me
Of what might have been.

........................

NEW YEARS EVE BASH AT BANGALORE

2010-01-07T09:10:00.000-08:00

This years New Years Eve Party was the best ever I attended in all my life. My brother Bubbles has so many friends that I cannot remember any of their names. But since I am good with faces it makes up for lost time.

But what a party, let me tell you. Chicken barbeque manned by Sudeep, Beef Fry cheffed by my brother, Mutton and potato stew prepared by me and umpteen snacks, all prepared By Siji Rehana. Siji can be spotted posing in a yube top with hubby Sudeep and dancing away later. Vyas and his wife Vandana were the most innovative dancers, followed by Vyas and my sis-in-law Latha. Then we went berserk when Travolta songs came on from Saturday Night Fever. By then the party was at a fever pitch.

Since I do not drink but did not want to appear antiquated, I carried a goblet of red wine till the time I could pour it down my brother's ever waiting throat.

But I missed my friends back home. All of them were busy. Journos were on the terror trail and the English Professors were busy catching up with the lessons.

But yes, I enjoyed. Did all of you enjoy this New Year? Do.

EXHIBITION PICS

2010-01-05T03:06:00.000-08:00

Here are some pics from my Painting Exhibition. Eminent painters and artists like K. K. Marar, Sarat Chandran, P. S. Karunakaran, Eby N Joseph and Selvan Meloor can be spotted. My friends Dr. Sajan, Haroun Rashid, sis-in-law Latha Chandradeep, our family friend Advovate Vijayan, Abdul Gafoor, owner of City Center and Publisher of Kerala Kaumudi can also be spotted in some of the pics.

Yesterday I was invited to inaugurate a Childrens' Art & Cartoon Camp at Tellicherry. I am overwhelmed.

This year has begun well. Hopes spill out of my bag of dreams. Hopes.

MY BOOK LAUNCH

2009-12-15T00:35:00.000-08:00

MY BOOK LAUNCH

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

And here comes the invite of MY Unisun Anthology. I think the cover definitely looks both evocative and inviting. Eight of MY sizzling personal poems inside.

All are invited.

Loves

CHANDINI SANTOSH

ON A RAILWAY PLATFORM

2009-12-04T08:53:00.000-08:00

ON A RAILWAY PLATFORM

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

We sat
Below the hooded parapet
On a creaking bench
While trains stopped
And hiccouped away

You may come with me
You said,
Or else
Just stand here
And wave
I understand

You would not share
If I opened the world
In my palms
You would still stand rooted to this spot
Without waving
With just a hint of a smile
At the hinges of your mouth

.........................

ARTISTRY MAKEOVER

2009-11-26T20:12:00.000-08:00

FACE TRANSPLANT

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Look how Kishore, ace makeup artist from Bollywood transformed my plain homely face into that of a rock star, if I could call myself that!

I had attended Artistry's two day workshop at Hotel Blue Nile along with forty others in my batch. I was chosen randomly to get a glamorous makeover while a very pretty girl got the subtle makeover.

Kishore is the person who did the makeup for the likes of Kamalhasan, Rani Mukherji, Jyotika, Rajnikant, Nagma and the like. I received compliments galore from my makeup artist on my skin and body language.

Artistry is the leading cosmetic multinational marketed by AMWAY Corporation. I have been using Artistry products for more than three years. You may see the obvious results.

Last week was a magical one for me as two sides of my talent could be showcased. I felt like I was being ushered into another era from the mundane and pathos filled phase of my life.

The mellifluous traces of hope can be found even in the saddest of songs.

AN INDIAN BRIDE

2009-11-25T07:46:00.000-08:00

AN INDIAN BRIDE

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

The serpent headed bangle
You slipped on my wrists
Before you made love:

The ruby red convex eyes
The conniving filigree
The heaviness
And the gleam of night

As the serpent bit into my hand
I felt your weight
And my weightlessness

…………………………..

UNTITLED II

2009-11-24T21:43:00.000-08:00

UNTITLED II

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

While walking
Beneath those harsh cashew trees
With the wind moaning around us
You slowed down
As I stood still

Your eyes were hooded
Mine moist
Like the remains
Of an untold story

Let me dream of flower framed windows
And gleaming parallel tracks
That runs to nowhere
Like hope that spirals down
To hopelessness

……………….

My dear friend Sune took the above sketch that you see, done with ballpens.

........................

UNTITLED

2009-11-24T01:41:00.000-08:00

UNTITLED

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Those rusting lampposts
The wooden slatted benches
On which we sat
Facing an eccentric sea

At times
I get this sneaky feel
About this monster sea
Perhaps
The waves can read
Our minds

………………………………

The pix above was clicked by my friend.

MORE PAINT REVIEWS

2009-11-23T21:37:00.001-08:00

INDIAN EXPRESS

2009-11-23T08:27:00.000-08:00

The new Indian Express carried this review of my Paint Exhibit on Saturday 21st November.

PAINT REVIEWS

2009-11-22T11:54:00.000-08:00

PAINT REVIEWS

CHANDINI SANTOSH

The reviews poured in before, during and on the last day of the Paint Exhibit. Well I am dumbfounded!

This one is from the MATHRUBHUMI. Those who cannot read Malayalam may contact me for translation.(ahem!)

I am zapped by all that media frenzy that my exhibit brought on. I believe one mediaperson said that they had not seen a person like me at the Press Club of Kannur anytime. Well, well I am silenced.

Thanks folks. You really went all out. I am speechless. I have no clue as to what hit me.

More tomorrow.

Loves

PAINTING EXHIBITION

2009-11-15T08:46:00.000-08:00

My second Painting Exhibition is slated to be held at the Town Hall, Kannur from November 20th to 22nd. Here is the brochure and invite.

On Satyrday a Seminar will beconducted at the same venue on 'The Role of Art and Women in our Society'.

I request all of you, dear friends, to attend and support my creative venture.

With immeasurable Loves

CHANDINI SANTOSH

ISMAIL KADARE

2009-11-07T07:14:00.000-08:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

ISMAIL KADARE’s

THE BLINDING ORDER

I read Kadare’s ‘Agamemnon’s Daughter’ last year and was impressed with his pithy novella. Yesterday I read another of his work, ‘the Blinding Order’ and was mesmerized by the political statements he made through a compelling fantasy.

Almost all Kadare’s works dwell on the Iron Curtain and the human tragedy that lay behind them. He writes: Dictatorship and authentic literature are incompatible. The writer is the natural enemy of dictatorship…

Kadare often sailed perilously close to the wind and many of his texts were banned. He had to smuggle out some of his manuscripts in a wine bottle. But his witty, sly and moving panorama of a universal history made maintained a glimmer of hope that even in the worst of times, things can still be done with style and intelligence.

Kadare’s writing is a striking reminder that great literature does not depend on circumstances, but overcomes them. Ismail Kadare won the Man Booker Prize in 2005.

An essential read for serious readers.

…………………….

THE FINGER TRICK

2009-10-31T01:02:00.000-07:00

THE FINGER TRICK

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

When we visited O.V.Vijayan, the legendary writer and cartoonist at his Delhi residence, his son who was in his teens showed us a trick I remember to this day. He held a Nivea cream tin can in his right hand and whispered conspiratorially to us:
Take a look, he said.
My friend Gita and I whispered back in the same conspiratorial tone.
What is in it?
Murali opened opened the lid of the cream jar and a dead finger of a child peeked out. Aghast as we were, we spoke in awe.
How did you manage that?
I was at this accident site and that is where I managed to get the finger.
Liar, we shouted. Logic was beginning to dawn on us.
Murali gave up a little later and proceeded to show us how he managed the rigmarole.

I tricked several children of my area with the above trick, though I managed to hold on to the secret for much longer than Murali could. In fact, I managed to camouflage my little finger with dabs of brown so it stood out from my own. I also revved up the accessories, making the cotton look like blood encrusted. I won every time.
My niece to this day hollers at me not to show the ‘dead finger trick’ though she knows well enough it is not for real. You can well imagine the effects I produced.

I go about everything I do with the same diligence. And yes, I get the same results as with the finger. Every time. All the time.

………………………………

Seen above is the brochure for my first Paint Exhibit done in 2008. The next one which is to be held for three days from November 20th at the Town Hall, Kannur shall be put up as soon as they are ready.

..................

GEOMETRY OF LOVE

2009-10-26T09:08:00.000-07:00

GEOMETRY OF LOVE

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Once you told me
Counting waves
Is an absurd activity
I can only laugh
At the absurdity of it
I have done weirder things
I have loved you from all angles
Though I am not good at playing
At the likes of love
Where geometry does not fit in

My mind
Dolphin like
Dives at the scent of love
As I sit at this curved beach
With a large and round sun
Plastered on the horizon

Do you see
That black rock
Sharp and slanting
On which the waves explode
With such disdain
And come back for more?
Absurd

Love
Is the flicker of hope
On a sordid sky
The image
That flits past a smiling mirror

One day
We shall sit on the cold of this stone bench
With just a hint of moon above,
Our thighs barely touching
And an ache hanging between us
Till the night
Tortoise slow
Grinds back to reality

Let us count all the waves
On all the seas
To the very last of them
On unarmed shores
Where the sea and the sand
Are plaited into one
And all absurdities dissolve

……………………………..

This is one my favorite poems, published by UNISUN PUBLICATIONS, BANGALORE in their annual anthology THE SILKEN WEB 2007.Above is the review carried by the DECCAN HERALD on the poetry colleciton. I remember reciting this at the launch of my third collection of poems, VOYAGE SERIES and getting a tremendous applause. Though I have a small voice not suitable for poetry recitals or public speaking, I assure you I do so with total confidence.

One day I hope to put up bits of the video footage of my book releases on my blog, though I shall feel shy doing so.

NEVER NEVER LAND

2009-10-22T10:09:00.000-07:00

NEVER NEVER LAND

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Not a single hand
Rise towards me
To lead me to nowhereland
The never never land
That a dream conjures up

This circular night
On its way down
Has a tuneless song on its lips
And an iridescent fragrance
Of unimaginable love

......................

The pix above was clicked at the launch of my anthology MOSAIC, published by UNISUN PUBLICATIONS, Bangalore last year. I received the copy of MOSAIC, a hard bound lovely book from the young and budding poet Anjum Hassan.

PAINT REVIEW

2009-10-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

Just before my first paint exhibit, I got this review in THE HINDU. Take a look.

AMITABH BACHCHAN

2009-10-13T21:24:00.000-07:00

The year I published my first collection of poems, Amitabh Bachchan was reported sick and convalescing. On an impulse I sent a copy to Bachchan and barely two weeks later, a long cream colored cover embossed with the legendary name of AMITABH BACHCHAN reached me.

For days on end I was in a daze. The words in his letter has feeling and joy.

He wrote to me again, after my third collection of poems, 'Voyage Series & Other Poems'.

FIRST BOOK - FIRST REVIEW

2009-10-12T22:01:00.001-07:00

FIRST BOOK - FIRST REVIEW

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

I collected umpteen number of words on my journey in solitude. Like so many pebbles in dried gourd. They began to sprout wings and then landed on my keyboard and out came my poems. The words had strung together and made meaning all by themselves.

At the time I did not realise they were poems. They were the angst that had become a burden inside me and I exorcised them by opening the flimsy cage behind which they lay trapped.

Those words spelt freedom and immense joy. INDIAN EXPRESS carried this review a week later.

..........

STARS

2009-10-10T09:04:00.000-07:00

I have been hunting around
For the word
That transcribes emotion

..................

DEAF AND DUMB

2009-10-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

DEAF AND DUMB

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

The egg shaped entrance
Amongst shiny buffalo hillocks
That led us to the cave
On the banks of an oily black river
Where a black Narcissus
Stared at his ghost

Remember
The saffron scented nasturtiums
The uprooted trees
The shadows of which
Umbrellaoed over us

You are deaf, my love
And I am dumb:
Your words
Fall on endless rocks
And my wails
Go unheard

………………………..

REMEMBRANCE

2009-10-05T19:05:00.000-07:00

REMEMBRANCE

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

What you said
Had an easy eloquence
What I say
Has dumb meaning

On a night
When a giant moon strode up the sky
And trees moaned against each other,
You put a finger
Where bones ached

I have you, you said:
But you have only yourself
You said it with a smile

Past is a prologue
The beginning and the end
Where ferocious waves
Part a feeble past from the present
Leaving behind,
The sting of your words
And the aroma of our helplessness

…………………………….

LITTLE JOYS - BIG SORROWS

2009-10-01T21:26:00.000-07:00

LITTLE JOYS – BIG SORROWS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Around four years back, my cousin Priya and husband Andrew had come down from New York to OM along with my aunt. My brother and family drove down from Bangalore. My sister and son drove down from Kannur. My mother was living with us at the time. OM wore the color of festivities and joy for three days and nights.

We slept on mats, quilts and whatever else we could lay our hands on, spread on the floor in the living room. We talked of old times and new ones.

Early the next morning I put up a Vishukkani for them in the traditional style. Each of the members was brought blindfolded to see the Vishukkani in all its glory. Each of them was given money, unniappams and firecrackers. We lit so many firecrackers that our neighbors came to watch the shimmering lights lighting up our long driveway. It was a Vishu to remember for long.

We were invited for dinner the same night to our elder brother’s house in Kannur. I wore my newly stitched beige chiffon churidars with large cherry red flowers on them. Beige and red striped pushups beneath and a diaphanous shawl over my shoulders. I wore a dash of lip gloss. My eyes glistened.
We bundled ourselves into three vehicles, one of them driven by me. As soon as I reversed our car, Santosh called out to me. Ominous shadows began to envelop me.

You don’t go please, I’m not feeling well. Says he.
You seem alright. Says I.
Don’t go.

Tears would not come. My eyes stayed dry. Dear readers, all eyes were on me, how could I let myself go?
All of you carry on, say I.
Such is life.

I never ever wore the shimmering dress again. The day I left OM I gave the unworn dress to my pretty assistant.

I have never looked back. But the languid feel of the starry night, the smell of festivities, the damp sweetness in the air and the brittleness of wasted happiness haunt me to this day.

………………..

JOSE SARAMAGO

2009-09-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

JOSE SARAMAGO’s
ALL THE NAMES
Review
By
CHANDINI SANTOSH

Saramago reminds us time and again why he won the Literary Nobel Prize after his most read work, BLINDNESS. His works are living proof of what great writing does to people and why he is considered the most influential of living writers.
Titled ALL THE NAMES, the book strikingly and ironically holds only one name – that of the protagonist, Jose, doubly macabre as the name is the author’s own. I have yet to read a work in which the central character is named after the author, except in memoirs.
Senhor Jose is a lowly clerk by day and an explorer of famous lives by night, a take off on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One day he chances on upon an index card of an ordinary woman whose details hold as much fascination for him as any other celebrity’s. Rising like a phoenix from his own humdrum existence dictated by regimentation, Jose begins to track the woman down obsessively following a thread of clues in a bid to rescue her from ‘an oblivion deeper than the grave’.
As in all the works of Saramago, what stands out is not his vast repertoire of unhesitatingly alien words or his by now, infamous punctuation, but the eternity in the subject and the way Saramago goes about narrating the same with tongue in cheek humor. ALL THE NAMES is remarkable, both unsettling and delightful, perhaps the hallmark of true literature.
Every page in the book, though undeniably grotesque, has an multiple insights into life. Each paragraph stuns you while the hazardous string of words opens up the vistas of human nature, each path traveled upon by all great writers many times over, but nothing as momentous as Saramago’s, since they are laced with black humor.
You do not need a passport or visa to be transported to the realms of unadulterated human imagination. I chew on these words, the parameters of my intelligence and the translucence of fiction filling up like a hydrogen balloon.
Apart from Saramago’s THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST, no other work of his stray so much into the realm of fantasy as this one. But when we realize the state of the mind of the character in question, all fantasy dissolves and becomes part and parcel of reality. His apocalyptical words on loneliness can be preserved for future generations, it is that enlightening.
Here are some jottings on the novel from all parts of the world.
‘The roots of Saramago’s tales run deep, tapping into a European tradition of exemplary fictions, in which the human soul resists the encroaching forces of dehumanizing bureaucracies. ALL THE NAMES is a fine successor to BLINDNESS, a work worthy of a literary Nobel Laureate.
LISA JARDINE, The Times

‘A fantastic tale of a cowed clerk defying the power of his monolithic employer. It’s the breezy wit which Saramago challenges a world where Love and Death must be catalogued and explained away by the dull – minded that makes his book so compelling’.
CHRIS DOLAN, Glasgow Herald

‘A lovely adventure, a search for an unknown woman, floats on sentences that topple over one another like waves’.
ROBERT WINDER

...................

LOST SONGS

2009-09-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

LOST SONGS

By CHANDINI SANTOSH

There are no words
That can measure upto silence
While the world grinds on its axis
And while
The epileptic sea snores,
The scent of your absence
Assails my nostrils

As I watch a nickel plated sun
Going down on all fours
And snatches of lost songs
Hum in the background,
Unbridled time runs its course
On its own.

.................

I wrote this poem right here in a jiffy. Will read tomorrow. And also my latest pix posted with elan!

PLAYACTING

2009-09-23T10:42:00.000-07:00

PLAYACTING

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Being pint sized, I had to sit it out on the front bench, first row, throughout school and the most part of college. As a bright undergraduate I could take my chances with being lazy and laidback. But not too much as I learnt after an erratic teacher caught me – Not taking down History notes. British History at that!

Where are your notes, he barks at me.

What notes Sir?

Notes, says he.

Well, you mean Richard the II and Henry the IV and their innumerable wives, Sir, say I.

Same, he thunders.

Well, I haven’t been taking notes…

So start now!

I put up my right hand. Shall I go bring my notebook, Sir says I.

Dead sure. Period.

Now I did not know what I was getting into right? So I walked while the giggles and the chuckles broke out in our college classroom.
My house was a five minutes of solid walking under a blazing sun. I did not walk. Instead I ran.

My mother saw a short comet dash in and dash out through the corner of her eyes whereas my father did not notice anything amiss. As I rushed back to my classroom, where my teacher had gone overboard with the nuptials of the aforesaid Kings, I was again greeted with a spurt of goggles. I sat down to write his dictation and that was that. Though my wisdom teeth had not erupted, I had the commonsense to keep a dozen pages blank before I started taking down the notes.

Friends, comrades and fellow bunglers, my notes when it finally got finished could have been collector’s item, what with my best handwriting, written half a millimeter over the blue lined notebook. I wrote fervently, feverishly.

One evening I was summoned by the same teacher to the Department room after classes.

Bring your notebook, barked my teacher.

Now what, thought I.

I will have to punish you for what you did earlier, says he.

But Sir… I write with precision and balance, says I. Not a word here or there. All commas and semicolons in place. Period.

Even then, it is only fitting that I punish you, else what will the other students think?

This was the last straw. Dear readers, perhaps I drink much too much water since my tears flow abundantly. I did not cry. I wailed like a child.

He must have got a huge fright as all the staff stared at us amusedly.

No …no…no… he says, my punishment is… that you are going to act in the One Act Play I am directing for this years’ Inter Collegiate Arts festival.

Sir… You may hang me, but this! Most cruel, Sir.

He became serious all of a sudden. No crying and no more exhortations, the rehearsals start NOW!

Throughout the rehearsals, I played my naughty jokes with nary a word from my teacher. Within a month we were ready with play. Would you believe dear readers, the One Act Play was an out and out comedy and all the jokes were on me. I was the guest who was overstaying and the hero summons all his clever schemes to oust me from his aunt’s guesthouse.

I am this great lover and connoisseur of food – shucks, not in real life please, and I had to eat British style with forks and knives.

By the time I went up on stage, I was a pro and game for all the lights and sounds of college. I wore very short tight skirt, screaming red colored and a white shirt on top, whose sleeves had been wrenched off. My hair was painted gold and cheeks a bright cherry when one of my drama troupe mates commented that I looked like a doll – though painted.

Suffice to tell you I did my part with élan. The first time I had to run all over the stage I did it with super confidence what with my legs looking like a dream come true. On for the Finals at the Calicut University Campus, I ran with gusto, swishing past the kreiglights first and the dining table and chairs next. (Psst…my friends had told me to take advantage of the lights and my bare makeuped legs.

When the top honors were announced, mine was right up there. I won the Best Actor Trophy in the Female category. As I strode up to lift my trophy from the Vice Chancellor’s hands, I was grabbed from behind by co actors.

Let go, said I.

You can’t.

Why not?

Your back is not in order. (This in short whispers.)

So what, says I.

Come on, your back would be on show.

My tears have nothing else to do, they flow like crazy. I want my trophy.

My classmate and official makeup woman removes a printed lungi from her collection and drapes it over my churidars, pinning it stylishly at the back like a sarong.

I went up the stage riding on a thunderous applause.

Tailpiece: After marriage, when I showed the certificate to my husband, he said and I quote: Oh! So that’s where you learnt to act.
Dear Readers, I have never acted again, not in a comic role. I was playing this mega serial of a comedy in life, right?

Life!!!

UNTITLED

2009-09-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

UNTITLED

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

As a door closes
When another opens
Or some such thing:
It’s a Machiavellian notion
Doors closing and opening,
A window is enough, my love
Above which
Lies the preamble of a sky
Stretched taut over the sea
As one good word
Could read your mind:
Like sand sieved in time

………………….

LONELINESS

2009-09-17T23:24:00.000-07:00

LONELINESS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Loneliness
Is not having to say
You are sorry
It’s paradoxical,
I know:

A diaphanous rain
Envelops the side walks
Otherwise,
We could have taken a walk
Over cobbled streets
Zebra crossings

This vertical rain
Needles my face

I remember
We would have lain
Under warm blankets
One on top of the other,
Like humming birds
And not talk about
The grocery bill,
The letters waiting for reply,
The maid swabbing the hallway

Ignore the plumber
Whose tun tun
Stabs at the rain collage
……………….

NEW DELHI

2009-09-15T01:09:00.000-07:00

NEW DELHI

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

After we left Delhi in the seventies, I had two occasions to revisit. The first one was with my classmates of Journalism just before we appeared for our final exams. By then I had got married. The second time was when Santosh and I went to buy furniture and other knick knacks for our upcoming new house.

The second journey was memorable for many reasons. Since we did not have a proper honeymoon, both of us looked forward to the trip which would take us far away from our daily routine for two whole weeks. Because Delhi was new to Santosh, he acted like a lost child. A lost child was uppermost in my mind as well.

Every evening after sightseeing, we plonked ourselves at the underground centrally air conditioned shopping mall, Palika Bazaar, at the heart of Connaught Circle. We went round and round the complex, hand in hand like children who were afraid of getting lost. We had taped our local guardian’s address and number to our wrists, which did not prevent us from locking hands. At times, he would press my hands a couple of times in sheer happiness. At times, I would hug him and rub my face all over his shirtfront. He wore a stylish black woolen coat when we went out, while I covered myself in a Kashmiri shawl. He ran his fingers over my flushed cheeks. It was wondrous that nobody stared at us. We were strangers in a teeming cosmopolitan city.

I was definitely more flippant of the two. Well versed in Hindi and also used to bargaining Delhi style, I had a field day at Palika. Santosh would not leave my hand even for a second. He told me half jokingly that if he got lost, he would not be found again. It was winter in Delhi and flowering trees wore a riot of colors. We slept under huge blankets while the sights and sounds of the city seeped in through the ventilators.

I bought half a dozen churidars a Kashmiri embroidered kurti in crimson, which I am wearing in the above snap clicked at our cousin’s apartment at Delhi. Looking at us no one could have imagined that we had problems galore though we looked like a normal young happy couple.

Perhaps that is what life is like. Normal on the surface and paranormal underneath.

……………………..

VULTURES

2009-09-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

VULTURES

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

This evening I went to the terrace of this multi storey building. The sky was a somber gray blue but the breeze, insistent and enlivening. As I stood looking at the azure sea and the swaying palms, I sensed large birds which I assumed to be vultures, circling over me. How could they spot me and harm me was the first thought that came to my mind when I was reminded of a similar scene ten years back at the KMC Hospital at Mangalore.

I had gone to the terrace in similar fashion and while looking out at the cricket game going on at one end and the huge furnace incinerator on the other, a large bird the size of a kite swooped down on me. I ducked through sheer intuition or perhaps involuntarily, but I remember my panic when I realised how near the bird had come to. The force of the flight of the huge killer bird had thrown me out of gear then. I flew inside, bile rising to my throat.

Now I know I must not take chances like that day a decade back, since I have no one who will come to my aid if I eyes are plucked off by a vulture. Not that people dont love me, but nobody can love me more than myself.

As I have told you more times than one - I am an orphan, left alone to fend for myself, and if this sounds alarmist to you, you are merely being polite about the whole thing. My life, my dreams, my writings and my paints should not be orphaned like me, so I am careful with myself.

Will always be.

...........................

COMPASS

2009-09-08T10:38:00.000-07:00

COMPASS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Like a mountain stream
Without a compass
I have got lost on these hillocks

I will take my time
To reach the sea
Here,
Under thick foliage
I might lie down
Like a coiled and sleepy python

And dream
Of the kiosks I left far behind
The protruding stalagmites
Those white flowers
Glistening in the rain
And the chaotic blue of rocks
The leaves
Falling one by one
In a slow drizzle
From the silver oak
With ghost white trunks
And the song of gray birds

The river must pour down the sea
Like a leaking faucet
Though there are no rules
Which say
At what time they should arrive.
…………………..

MEMORY FLOOD

2009-09-03T21:56:00.000-07:00

MEMORY FLOOD

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

I have torn away
Your memories
Like an old muslin cloth
And carried them to the beach last evening
To be thrown into the sea
Where endless sand
And slanting palms
Get wet in the rains

Between a hysteric sea
And a hypnotic devil
The muslin shreds
Have stuck to my mouth
And peripatetic soul

……………………

ONAM

2009-09-01T01:48:00.001-07:00

All Mallus of the world unite! You have nothing to loose except some flowers! It is that time of the year we mallus become all nostalgic and sentimental. Yes, it is ONAM!

Wish all of a Very Happy Onam.

ETHNIC PROFILING

2009-08-30T23:25:00.000-07:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH
on
ETHNIC PROFILING

Ethnic profiling has been in the news in the past few weeks after Shahrukh Khan was detained for more than an hour at the Newark airport in USA. Though the visual media tried to milk it of all the hidden tribulations the mega star must have gone through, it did not succed as Shahrukh Khan did not relent. Rightly so. Bigger stars had been hounded in the same fashion earlier by the US, Irrfan Khan and our own Malayalam Superstar Mammotty(seen in the cbove photograph clicked along with Santosh and myself during a function at Tellicherry) included. And then the real BIG name surfaced: Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam, the Former President of India who had been searched right here at the New Delhi Airport when the whole world knows that he falls into that category of people who are exempt from this rigmarole. But as is usual to our former President's nature, he refused to let the matter blow up into an unmanageable size.
Many non entities go through this ordeal without a beep from them, probably realising that what the officials are doing might save their own lives at one point or the other.
I wish we practised some of this in our daily lives. our freedoms may be precious to us, but it is only the politicians and other VIPs who enjoy the benefits of our secular ideals. Why not make equality impartisan instead of selective?

................

MY NOVEL

2009-08-29T11:02:00.000-07:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

ON

MY NOVEL "BELONGING"

As I said earlier, words and paints are flowing out of me and the good news is that Penguin Books have asked me to send in my novel. No, it is not as easy as it sounds, I have already received their rejection letter for the poems that I had sent in. But it is in the trying that beginners like me have to find hope and pleasure.

So I am asked to send in the Detailed synopsis, Chapter outlines and any two chapters of my novel 'BELONGING.' I have already decided on one chapter which is titled 'TIME WARPS' but have yet to decide on the second one.

BELONGING has twenty seven chapters and the action takes place in North Malabar as well as DElhi and Manipal. Some scenes also feature Kolkota. All the chapters except the last one six to seven thousand word strong, which means the total number of words is nearly one and a half lakhs.

So many words! Sometimes I am surprised at myself. Some chapters have very lyrical titles:

LAST SUMMER OF CHILDHOOD
WATER DANCE
HEAD HUNTING
CENTER OF GRAVITY
VALLEY OF DISCONTENT
PAST CONTINUOUS
THE PENDULUM
PAUSES IN TIME
SCENT OF SURVIVAL ..... and many more.

For the time being do look at this oil pastel I did this afternoon. To take my mind off the tension of sending the manuscript as well as the sheer joy of it. I have now been writing my novel for the past five and a half years. So what is three months of waiting, right?

This too shall pass. That is what I tell myself most of the time.

PHOTOGRAPH

2009-08-26T22:03:00.000-07:00

Here is my niece photographed by a professional. The light coming in from the left and the shades playing on a young, eager and confident face.

I am deeply attracted to photographs which have a professional touch, though the subject remains candid.

CHEMISTRY

2009-08-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

CHEMISTRY

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Chemistry has a mind of its own
It does not listen to Physics

Like a somnambulist journeying through life
These words vanish like smoke
The paper on which it is written,
Will be engraved with
Traces of meaning
While life slips away
From its bones and muscles

…………………

PS The sketch above is done with felt pens.

VALUE OF MONEY

2009-08-11T21:37:00.000-07:00

VALUE OF MONEY

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

On the eve of the millennium, when the world was celebrating the dawn of a new era, I sat forlorn on the cold of a wooden bench in front of the ICU of KMC Hospital at Mangalore. Save for a few doctors and nurses the multi specialty hospital was quiet, though not empty. Santosh underwent a fourteen hour surgery to remove a tumor in his colon.

I had twenty five thousand rupees in an unopened bundle and around five to six thousand in my bag. I went to pay the surgery bill and realized that the money I had would not last for a week. Medicines worth four to five thousand rupees were prescribed for him on a daily basis. Santosh lay in coma all this while.

I do not know where I got the strength for managing a critical patient, a doctor at that. I managed. Money was the biggest problem since I had already placed my trust on the surgeons. I called up my mother who shelled out Rs. Forty thousand which sufficed for a week or so. I asked my financial advisor to get me Rs. One lakh, after exiting from a prestigious share holding. He promptly did. No questions asked.

This lasted for about three weeks. In the meantime, Santosh would be brought to back to our room, but then some complications would develop and he would promptly be shunted to the ICU. Another major surgery followed and the lakh vanished. This was when I thought up the best course of action. I went to the jeweler from whom I had bought diamond studs.

I remember I took a taxi to the jewelers. He took back the diamond studs and quoted a price which was much les than what I had expected.
It is worth more, I told him, and I need it badly.
He said I am giving you the maximum price that you will get anywhere. I hesitated only for a second before pocketing the money.

After three days I was back at the jewelers. This time I removed my ‘Mangalsutra’ which Santosh had tied around my neck at the time of the wedding. It weighed all of five sovereigns plus a sovereign worth of a pendant, with OM carved on it, considered sacred and irremovable according to Hindu traditions. I flicked it off my neck and asked the jeweler to evaluate the cost of the same. He promptly began to unclasp the pendant to give it be returned to me.
I said, take that too.
He was horrified. His expression said it all. No madam, he said, we are god fearing people, we neither do nor play around with mangalsutras. Our business will not prosper that way, if we buy the sacred pendant back from our customers with their tears splattered all over it.
I said, there are no tears. Please take them.
Nothing is more valuable than life itself.

He did not relent.

We stayed at the hospital for more than fifty days and the final bill ran into lakhs. I paid up the whole bill one day prior to our discharge and I was walking down the stairs quietly after dinner when I noticed this notice stuck on the partition to the billing section. It read thus:

The bill does not include the amount of surgery. It will be given to the patients at the time of the discharge.

I stood rooted to the ground. I ran literally to the Medical Superintend and poured out my problem in choking words. He said he could only give some discount on the bill as Santosh was a former student of the medical college. The balance amount of Rs. Fifteen thousand stared at me.
I did not have the required amount.

In a flash I knew what had to be done. I tentatively picked up the telephone and called my brother-in-law who worked at Dubai, but was on his regular holiday back home.
I said, we are getting discharged tomorrow and I need some more money to pay the complete bill.
How much, he asked.
I said, I will pay you back as soon as I come down there.
How much he asked?
I could have cried listening to him. I said I would need at least Twenty thousand rupees.
How do I get it across to you, I leave tomorrow evening, he replied.
No problem I said, my driver is coming to take us back he will come to your house and get the money.
No need, he says, I will stand near the highway near this medical shop and give it to the driver.

On the day of the discharge, I got up early, fed and changed Santosh’s clothes. He seemed happy and eager to be going back to our home after what seemed to be an eternity of medical and surgical procedures at the hospital. The driver came in our car and I paid the whole bill and I heaved a sigh of relief.

After our return I wrote down the money I had borrowed. I made arrangements to close down our clinic, for which I had paid an advance of Rs. Forty thousand. I sent my driver with half that amount to my brother-in-law’s house. As prompt as that.
To this day, he tells our banker friend that if you should lend money you should lend it to someone like my sis-in-law. I repaid my mother after exiting from some of the share holdings. I had little money left by then.

When I restarted the clinic a month later I took on its reigns single handedly. I was accountant, pharmacist, nurse, compounder and assistant to my doctor husband – all rolled into one. I had learnt the best lesson in my life. Manage your money all by yourself and that will teach you the value of money.

…………….

PS The pix above was clicked right after starting our clinic at home. The clinic was built in a hurry, though the main door took a long time to be fixed. A little more than six months and we had a full fledged clinic fitted with an airconditioner, X-Ray reader and a pharmacy which I managed on my own.

A TRIP TO THE WOODS

2009-08-05T00:05:00.000-07:00

WOODS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Under the hiatus of
These trees
And the murmur of leaves
The hidden stream
And its painless gurgle

Here I stand
While eternity
Takes a dip in crystal waters

..................

ICE CANDY

2009-07-31T01:15:00.000-07:00

ICE CANDY

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

So then
Let us retract those words:
I mean those steps
Serpentine steps,
Thirteen in all
Sunken from umpteen footsteps

Words are tricky things
Those left unsaid
Are like the remains of an ice candy
Licked off all its sweetness
And spat on the grass
Words

………………………..

NADEEM ASLAM's MAPS FOR LOST LOVERS

2009-07-27T23:29:00.000-07:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

NADEEM ASLAM's

MAPS FOR LOST LOVERS

Nadeem Aslam became famous after the publication of ‘Maps for Lost Lovers’ in 2004. He had published ‘The Season of the Rainbirds’ in 19993. Born in Pakistan, Aslam now lives in England.

The story is about an honor killing that takes place in an unnamed English town. Jugnu and his lover Chanda have disappeared. Rumors abound in the close knit Pakistani community, and then on a snow covered morning Chanda’s brothers are arrested for their murder. The book tells the story that unfolds in the next twelve months.

‘Maps for Lost lovers’ opens the heart of a family at the crossroads of culture, community, nationality and religion, while expressing their personal pain in a language that is almost always poetic.

Honor killing is nothing new to sub continental readers, it keeps happening most of the time.
‘In this book, filled with stories of cruelty, injustice, bigotry and ignorance, love never steps out of the picture. It gleams on the edges of even the deepest wounds…A remarkable achievement.’ Kamila Shamsie, Guardian.

It needs great courage to turn one’s back on one’s culture and religion, as some of us would certainly understand. Some of us have gone through all this and perhaps more. As against people who show the courage to seek and find truth, there are those who dare not step out of the circle of religious and cultural bias, but live with their convictions, however tormenting life might be. It is this irony that is captured well in the ‘tender and vivid portrait of the strict Islamic mother, isolated by her unassailable belief.’ Alan Hollinghurst, Guardian.

‘It depicts an extraordinary panorama of life within a Muslim community…Thoughtful, revealing, lushly written and painful, this timely book deserves the widest audience.’ David Mitchell, Mail on Sunday.

Critics go breathless revealing the intricacies of this book. The telling commentary of expatriates in the UK is as disturbing as it is revealing. It is not coincidental that the story also depicts the clash of religion.

The story is exotic and is written in a nuanced language full of lyrical images. In fact, so thick are the interwoven imagery that the violence seems out of place and context. But as I completed reading the Map, I realized that if not for the lilting imagery, the brutalities pictured here might have been too much to digest. Though Aslam’s poetic language jars at times, I come to the conclusion that it was necessary, not because neither is violence restricted to the subcontinent nor to any community or religion throughout the history of humanity. As I look at it. History is the retelling of unimaginable cruelty practiced in the name of religion and ethnicity. As is evidenced from another book I am reading at present: FROM THE HOLY MOUNTAIN by WILLIAM DARYMPLE.

No religion is exempt from violence and bigotry.

…………………….

P. S : As I completed reading Aslam’s ‘Maps for Lost Lovers’, there were reports that an honor killing had shook a village in Haryana, which is fast developing district in the northern region of India. Haryana was formerly a part of the Punjab Province, but later broke away as most people belonging to that area spoke Hindi rather than Punjabi. Punjab is the prosperous district on the Indo – Pakistan border, which had achieved self reliance in food decades ago. Their agricultural poweress are well documented. Their love for the good life, their good looks, their millions, and their zest for life also are well known. In matters regarding health too Punjab has come up brilliantly. Punjab is richest state in The Republic of India.

But this does not naturally mean that the state of Punjab is the best state of the Union. You might wonder why. Let me explain. Kerala has the highest literacy in the whole of India. Population growth stands at zero. Health indices are of world standards. Cleanliness is a way of life. But all this is wiped out when you realize that superstition and religious intolerance have slowly crept into the fabric of our society. Joblessness is rampant, as most of the IT related educated youths come from this rather small state, thus the ensuing high density of population. Kerala is a major tourist attraction, as its beaches and greenery are both exotic as well as industrious. Yet, the locals always stare at foreign tourists, worse, they harass them too. We may be tolerant towards other religions, but not to ethnic minorities. We are willing to practice only white collar jobs, but the moment the working class arrive from our neighboring states of Tamil Nadu, or Karnataka, we raise a hue and cry. It is very funny, as what the proletariat demands is the reverse of what you may imagine. They say why the Tamils should work for the less wages instead of the grossly upward swinging labor wages that we practice over here. Sikhs are hooted for their turbans, without understanding that they are practicing what their religion demands of them. The whole of South India is as different from the North as chalk and cheese. The country is so diverse that one cannot keep up with the several languages and cultures. There are twenty six official languages at the last count.

Being a secular and thriving democracy has its benefits. In fact, I firmly believe that it is this democratic and secular set up that has foisted India on to the world stage.

………………………………

Dr.SANTOSH

2009-07-26T00:14:00.000-07:00

SANTOSH

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

I sketched Santosh with charcoal and a dash of oil pastel. I believe I have captured him rather well, though his smile and his essence have been lost.

Today is his first death anniversary.

What can I say about someone who died much before his time? Except that he was husband to me and life giver to many.

STRANGERS

2009-07-19T05:08:00.000-07:00

STRANGERS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

We were total strangers on the day of our wedding. Strangers in the morning, husband and wife by mid - morning, friends by afternoon, lovers by night and companions for life. But it was not as rosy as it sounds. No way.

Well, you cannot ask for the moon, right?

While on the way back to his house after the wedding, he removed his large sunglasses and asked me to identify whether they were power glasses or not. Out of sheer ignorance regarding glasses, I said, yes, they were power glasses. He laughed and said no - they were a masquerade to keep his patients from straying. Some patients took one look at him and flew from the clinic, thinking, my good god, such a young guy cannot be entrusted with my life! But ALL of them came back, regardless of his youth and inexperience. He was a doctor par excellence, and the most famous one in the history of that thickly populated village for about three decades.

Remove it, I told him. You look so much better without them. He did not wear them again.

At night, he said, I want to test your English, you are a postgraduate in English, right? Go on, I am best at spell checks, I told him. He said I will write it somewhere, and then you have to read the same. Easy, I said. He hugged me and drew some figures on my bare back. I said, do that again please, I mean write that again. He wrote it a couple of times before I could read what he had cored with his nails. Just three words, mind you. I could read it even before he had written it.

He has never said those three words to me all his life, never spelt it out, but I seem to know that he loved me more than anybody else.

..........................

MUSHROOMS

2009-07-13T04:19:00.000-07:00

MUSHROOMS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Last week
I chugged past
My ancestral house
Perhaps I should clarify:
The place where my long ago house stood

A tall and hasty building
Rose at the site
A large mushroom
From the rains

I sit at these cold slabs of stone
Without knowing
That houses are built
On old desires
And their ruins

...................

The drawing you see above is done with oil pastels and my niece's glitter pens.

UNDERWATER GRAVEYARD

2009-07-09T00:06:00.000-07:00

UNDERWATER GRAVEYARD

July of 1974, recorded the highest rainfall in Kerala in more than a decade. The elders had dubbed it as the kind of rain when even crows would not be able to keep their eyes open. It was that kind of a monsoon that came down from the skies.
Three brothers came down to Tellicherry from the nearby town of Mangalore to attend their cousin’s wedding. The youngest was seventeen, already six footer, a student of electronic engineering. The middle one, a year older, shy and diffident, interested in Kalaripayattu and body building, was studying for a Commerce degree. The eldest, twenty three at the time, had graduated in Medicine and eagerly awaited one year of Internship that would give him an MBBS degree.

The boys returned to their brother-in-law’s place as soon as the wedding ceremony got over. They had a good look at the swimming pool behind the house, invitingly brimming with water.

The younger ones called out to the eldest, Etta, come, we will bathe at the pool. The eldest one cringed and replied, I will take my usual hot water bath. The youngest stripped to his briefs. The middle one sat on the topmost step which lay submerged in water.

The youngest, not much of a swimmer, dived into the pool and the next minute, the others were greeted by hoarse cries of his drowning. The middle one sitting on the steps jumped in without a second thought, still dressed to the hilt. Within the next split second, their cries rose to a crescendo. The eldest one who stood lazily in the bathroom ran out towards the pool. Dozens of hands held him as he tried to escape those arms and dive into the pool from which the last cries of the twosome could be heard over the bubbling water. He had no clue as to the dynamics of swimming. The two brothers went down the pool, in a tight embrace.

News reached the venue of the wedding. The mother of the three boys was brought back in a taxi. Alighting from it, she frantically screamed – which one – tell me please – which one of my boys – please tell me. The crowd stood around in silence. They could not have told her.

On the verandah, two bodies were laid out. The eldest one sat next to them. He could not cry. Within a year he became Dr. Santosh.

Twenty five kilometers away, I stood at the steps of my ancestral house listening to the horrendous tragedy from every manner of people passing by. On 11th July 1974, people had nothing else to talk about for days on end. At the time I did not know Santosh, but their family was well known. We had only recently from Delhi, where we had our schooling.

Santosh told me years later, after we got married, that no tears would come from his eyes. I said, I know what you must have felt. I too could not cry when my brother’s plane crashed right in front of my eyes. His mother gave up non vegetarian food, new clothes, and her very attractive smile, never wore silk saris again, was on anti depressants till the time she died of Alzheimer ’s disease. Santosh never got to enjoy those carefree days internship, the only time a medico could enjoy. His father became a mere shadow of his former self. The parents smothered him with possessive live all their lives. Santosh, already shy and introverted, became more so. He would stare at the clock for long and wonder why time dragged. When the gong sounded, he would rush to give a shot of tranquilizer to his mother, keeping vigil even at night.

To escape the tedium, he must have given himself a strong shot of morphine.

……………………..

COINCIDENCES

2009-07-07T12:28:00.000-07:00

COINCIDENCES

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

I recently read a feel good book written by Robin Sharma who said that nothing in life is a coincidence. From then though my eyes would scan the pages, nothing would register in my mind.

Can you believe dear readers, that everything in life is destined to be? Well I cannot. If that was the case, life would not be this invigorating. Believe me, life is full of coincidences. That I am born to my parents is just a coincidence. That I am alive is another coincidence. That I came to marry Dr. Santosh is also a coincidence. Of course, marriages should never be a coincidence, but in our society, where arranged marriages are still the norm, marriages will remain a coincidence. Let me elucidate.

During my days as a post graduate student at the University Center at Tellicherry, I traveled by bus from S.N.College, which was at a walking distance from my house and alighted in front of the District Courts at Tellicherry. We walked to Mount Pleasant where a colonial building housed the University Center.

Shashikala Surendran, who was my classmate and friend during our undergraduate days, would board the bus from farther place in Kannur and I would board it in between. At times, she would manage to make space for one buttock to be squeezed in. The traffic would be at its peak, what with school students, collegians and office goers wying for a seat in the bus.

Many were the times we passed the sharp curve before reaching Dharmadam when we would be confronted with a house right on the roadside, overflowing with people. We would wonder what these people were doing their in long queues. It was then we realized that the house belonged to a young doctor named Dr. Santosh. His car porch had a blue Fiat car, which to our curious consternation, turned into a white Mercedes Benz.

‘This b****** must be making a hell of a lot of money. He has already changed his car twice.’ Shashikala would remark. I would listen only in half measures as I am wont to. I have absolutely no interest in the private or public lives of people, though I studied their mannerisms and the way they spoke. Perhaps for future references.

We passed out and went our different ways. We have not met since then: Me and Shashikala. She had married her Norwegian pen friend. I later learnt that her marriage had crumbled.

I joined the main University Campus at Calicut to do a PG course in Journalism and Mass communication. I was biding my time. My friend was frantically searching for jobs. When we met I was just out of my frocks. I was sixteen. We had decided to marry as soon as he got a decent job. The search took him all of seven years. Time poured down on us from the skies.

On a weekend when I had come down to my house, my elder sister had come down from Delhi. My younger sister had married a year back. My elder brother also had married at around the same time. My parents had a frantic air about them. I was short, fat, fair and ugly. I was twenty two going on twenty three.

In hindsight, that weekend changed everything. It toppled my applecart. Dr. Santosh and his family came over to my house. He later told his parents that he did not find any redeemable feature about me, though he pleasantly said ‘Ciao’ before he left.

Six months later, when no other girl’s horoscope matched Santosh’s, his father sent his emissary to my house after seeing me in town shopping for pastries. I smiled warmly at him and he told his aide, that he could not imagine why his son had rejected me. He also said how attractive I looked and how well mannered I was and how well I spoke English.

The next day, his aide landed up at our house and a lot of bad blood flowed between him and my mild mannered father. My father said, how dare you come after six forgotten months and ask brazenly for my daughter’s hands in marriage? He, a divorcee at that!

I giggled as was my wont. I said, father, give him the horoscope, after all who is afraid of a horoscope? I said this in jest and left for my hostel the next morning without waiting for the result of the horoscope matching.

In my absence, our horoscopes matched to a T and that was all my father-in-law wanted. The betrothal and marriage was fixed without consulting either the groom or the bride. We met each other at Guruvayoor Temple on the day of our wedding. The rest is history – sorry, our story.

I would share the joke about Shashikala and we would laugh. He believed in god but not in destiny, while I believed in none of this rigmarole.

…………………………..

It is late at night. Tears stream my face. Perhaps that is why this piece reads as though it is written by a six year old. I wish I were six so that I would not have to choose and betray.

A STREAM FROM THE HIILLOCKS

2009-07-06T09:23:00.000-07:00

My ancestral house was built on a hillock. It had many rooms but none had any privacy. A thin stream flowed skirting the vast acres. At one point, the stream fell off a cliff and formed a 6X6 feet hole and that is where we learnt to swim.

In the pix above, my youngest brother is clicked beside the stream. He looks like Jesus Christ in Christian Dior Briefs.

GURUVAYOOR TEMPLE

2009-07-04T09:45:00.000-07:00

Guruvayoor Temple is one of the most famous of the south Indian Temples. I got married there. Never been much of a temple goer throughout my life. Last month I visited Guruvayoor along with my family and friends, a maverick gang. Half of us refused to go in, we are atheists. The other half are muslims and also atheists. Finally one athiest escorted my sis-in-law and sister and did whatever they had to do.

I am told that the insides of the temple have a grandiose look, what with the dome being plated with gold leaf and all that. I do not believe that god keeps tabs on these things.

But the sculpts of goddesses look enticing all the same. Here we are clicked in front of them on the most important day of our lives.

We got married at Guruvayoor.

OM

2009-06-30T08:45:00.000-07:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

on

OM

By now I am sure the word OM is bound to strike some chord in you. It also happens to be the name of my h'OM'e I left far behind, but happens to be mine. I built it with my husband's money, my sweat and my blood.

At the time, it was a piece of rocky isolated land, with only one house nearby. Now the place is crawling with several large mansions. There were no trees except for four puny looking coconut trees. Now OM is surrounded with flowering trees, more coconut palms, Jackfruit and mango trees, all brimming with fruits. We built a solid compound wall on all four sides. On one side, the wall looks like the Bhakra Nangal Dam!

The long driveway is a sight to behold. In April, the yellow flowers of "konnappu' adorn it and in May, the driveway resesmbles a red Persian Carpet due to the falling Mayflowers. My maid had to do double the amount of work sweeping it all off. The gate is small and quaint, though it is as wide as the driveway and has colonial looking lamp posts on them.

I have sketched it right now as I described it to you.

Here it is.

.....................

THE STONE RAFT

2009-06-16T10:04:00.000-07:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

JOSE SARAMAGO's

THE STONE RAFT

Jose Saramago amazes me each time I read him. THE STONE RAFT is the fourth novel of Saramago I have read and believe me dear readers, these are four of the hundred books you should have read in your lifetime. I do not mean to exaggerate. Harold Bloom, eminent literary critic has rightly called Saramago, ‘the most important living writer’ of our times.

Reading any of Jose Saramago’s books is no easy task. He is not for the average reader. Add to it, his unusual punctuation, and you have difficult reading on your hands. Though his topics are metaphysical and fantastic, Saramago embellishes his writings with unbelievably realistic details. Not even for a moment does the reader feel that he is reading a fantasy, or a tale narrated in the magical realistic genre, which they definitely are.

In SEEING, a democratic election throws up more than eighty percent of blank votes, jeopardizing the polity into frenzy. It is a politician’s ultimate nightmare. (After I read it, I badly wanted something of the sort to happen in my democratic country, but as always, people of India rise to the occasion, saving democracy as well as our faith in electoral politics.) In BLINDNESS, a whole city plunges into a white blindness, an allegory unparalled in imagination. This book was later made into a movie by the same name, which unfortunately did not do well. ( I have not watched the movie, though the DVD is available to those who buy the book on line.) THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO CHRIST is written in a style which cannot be delinked from history, though it is fictionalized. (This is my favorite Saramago, so far.)

THE STONE RAFT which I finished reading yesterday is a splendidly imagined epic voyage, written in the quirky Saramago narrative style, that I have grown to like immensely. It is enchanted prose.

The Iberian Peninsula, comprising of some parts of Spain and parts of Portugal gets fractured and unmoors from the European continent and begins to float in the Atlantic with a will of its own. The broken away land resembles a stone raft gliding on sea, raising several questions, political, social and emotional. Three men, two women and a dog begin a voyage leading to nowhere in a country in great turmoil.

Impossible situations abound in the book, but they are covered in highly realistic details. It has to be read to be believed.

Told in a deceptively simple, naïve style this tale of fixed points and shifting goals is a superb vehicle for Jose Saramago’s shrewd and witty dissection of contemporary Europe.

‘Confirms Saramago’s reputation as Portugal’s leading novelist…Tremendous wit is always apparent in his imaginative conceits, comic digressions and verbal and narrative games’ IAN CRITCHLEY in SUNDAY TIMES.

………………..

LATA & CHANDRADEEP

2009-06-13T11:12:00.000-07:00

One very curvaceous, bespectacled and confident young woman knocked at the doors of OM more than a decade ago. No, she was neither a patient of Santosh nor did she come to meet me. She came down all the way from Bangalore to meet up with Chandradeep, my brother who had fractured his leg, while crossing a road in Dubai, most surely thinking of Lata.

Neither Lata nor Deep could be treated by Santosh or anyone else, for that matter. So they got married.

And tomorrow is their Eleventh wedding Anniversary. Didnt I tell you that time not only flies, but it flies by jet these days.

.................................

HEIGHT AND WEIGHT

2009-06-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

The pix below was clicked a day after our wedding. Just before my brother clicked it, Santosh looked down and whispered: Come, you may climb on your heels. I did more than that. I put a box beneath my legs.

Here we are captured with our respective parents on a most memorable day. He was so handsome that people would stop their work to look at him when he passed them on the road to his clinic. Carpenters put their hammer down and sat surrounded by the spools of wood. The blacksmith's fire caught up behind him. The masons looked down at him with plaster in hand like tableaus in the air. The beedi workers did not stop rolling their beedies, but their eyes never left him. He walked with a movie star gait. He also had a smile to die for.

My husband Dr. Santosh was just under six feet. And I am ... well why rake up heights when I have weight in plenty?

All of them stood up respectfully while Santosh passed by them. He lives in their hearts, for sure.

......................

NADEEM ASLAM

2009-06-06T23:41:00.000-07:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

NADEEM ASLAM's

THE WASTED VIGIL

Nadeem Aslam became a name to reckon with after his second novel, Maps for Lost Lovers hit the reading public and won the Kiriyama Prize as well as the Encore Award, and was later short listed for the British Book award in2005. It was long listed for the Man Booker Prize as well in the same year. His latest novel, The Wasted Vigil, is set in modern - day Afghanistan, the scene of a long line of war - torn country side.

The story spans nearly a quarter century, often interweaving and overlapping. The narrative vividly describes the terrible afflictions that have plagued Afghanistan since the time of Soviet invasions in 1979 when Kalashnikovisation of Afghanistan began in earnest and later when radical Islam reared its ugly head in the form of Taliban.

A Russian woman named Lara arrives at the house of Marcus Caldwel, an English doctor and widower, who lives in an old and abandoned perfume factory beneath the shadow of the Tora Bora Mountains. Their painful histories are interlinked. It is possible that Marcus’s daughter Zameen born of an Afghan woman named Qatrina may have known Lara’s brother, a soldier in the Soviet Army. Both Qatrina and Zameen are dead, becoming victims of the age in which they were born.

More people follow them in the following days, including two men from the CIA, Dunia, a young Afghan teacher and Casa, a radicalized youth intent on his mission. Casa is the atypical Islamic fundamentalist, having been indoctrinated since childhood into the cadre of a jihadi. The inner turmoil of all these characters, linked inextricably together, forms the crux of the plot.

The unrelenting and unforgiving landscape of Afghanistan and its steppe came alive in the novels of Afghan writer Khaled Hossieni in his novels, The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. Aslam takes up the rest of the narrative in what has come to be known as the worst human tragedies of present day. The violent news stories and the clippings that we read about in the newspapers and watch rushing past in front of our eyes on the television screens. With the arrival of the Taliban, the story takes on the colors of terrible tragedy and this comes alive in Aslam’s novel, as though it was part of a modern day parable. The thought that it could be real, comes as a jolt to people like me, living as I do in a zone where war is a gory drama staged in the visual media, as far removed from reality as the horrendous landscapes of human misery and medieval violence. More so because these atrocities are practiced on women, the all time soft target of mankind from the dark ages, in the name of religion. I have enough reasons to augment my belief that there exists no god, and if at all there is one, it must be a man. It is for the very same reason that no religion has ever been founded by a woman – thanks be to women.

I reproduce here some of the unforgiving acts of brutality ever practiced on the face of this planet from this book by Nadeem Aslam.

‘Women are always dying in repeated childbirth because the husbands didn’t listen – Qatrina had to struggle with the mosques because they said birth control was the west’s attempt at reducing the number of Muslims in the world. And then the Communist regime came and closed down the family planning centers, saying it was an Imperialist policy to detract attention from the real causes of poverty’.

Lara herself had failed yet again to carry a pregnancy to full term. For a Russian woman an abortion was one of the more obvious options when it came to birth control, the men not agreeing to consider any preventive methods themselves …

‘A man from Usha kept making his wife pregnant year after year. The young woman was twenty – two and had seven children in six years. He never allowed her body to recover, despite warnings and pleadings from Qatrina. When he brought his wife to us for an eighth time, she was almost dead’.

David saw a woman in a silkworm village being paraded naked through the streets. She cowered as she was beaten by several men for having committed adultery, for having taken a Russian lover… he watched as a man came forward and placed around her neck one of the Korans he had brought.

Qatrina, a doctor and Marcus’s wife is flogged and forcibly made to amputate her own husband’s right hand, with the threat that if she does not relent, he would be shot dead. Their crime is that she is a Muslim who dared to marry a British doctor, but also because their marriage was sanctified by a woman. A microphone is thrust on her howling mouth as a crowd of Taliban automatons cheer around them.

Aslam does not take sides, as his critics have pointed out. But the condemnations of such mindless violence do take on a slant towards Western sensibilities. No doubt that these acts are condemnable, but there is a thread of overzealousness in Aslam’s narrative. The Wasted Vigil is neither for the weak hearted nor for the passionately patriotic. He writes with a quaint lyricism and the book is littered with peculiarly fresh imagery. Paradoxically, I felt that the kind of lyrical narrative does not fit inside a novel about violence spanning three decades.

Western critics have many times recorded the lush lyricism of the orient, but at times, it palls for no reason whatsoever. As I said, perhaps the subject does not suit either the subject or the narrative. I am told that Nadeem Aslam’s much acclaimed earlier novel Maps for Lost Lovers which is the story of an honor killing, does indeed warrant lyricism of the kind Aslam dabbles in.
………………

The painting that you see above is done in pastels and depicts the front cover of Nadeem Aslam’s book. I think it has come out rather well. It shows ripe pomegranates, with one of them wrenched open and beginning to rot.

……………………………………..

BIRTHDAY GALLERY

2009-06-06T09:51:00.000-07:00

Today is my elder sister Prabha Sharma's birthday. She lives far away at Dusseldorf in Germany.

MANY MANY HAPPY RETURNS!

She is photographed in a TURKISH cap in the pix above and along with my younger sister Lekha Nath and myself in front of Lekha's Quintessential home.

We are three sisters, as different as chalk and cheese, but alike in many ways too.

...............................

KAMALA DAS

2009-05-31T22:38:00.000-07:00

Kamala Das, the first internationlly known poet from Kerala died at Pune on Sunday. She wrote short stories and novels in Malayalam under the pseudonym, Madhavikutty. Later she converted to Islam and took on the name of Kamala Suraiya.

Her major works are Summer in Calcutta, Alphabet of Lust and Manasi. Some of my poems have been likened to Kamala Das's poetry, of which I am completely innocent. I have read one and a half poems of Pablo Neruda and have faint recollections of the poetry learnt during my undergraduate days. It was never my area of interest and remains thus. After much prodding from my friend, I did read Das's Summer in Calcutta, which I found engrossing.

I shared the stage with Kamala Das just once at the inauguration of the Alumni Association at the University center in 2003. I had not even thought of writing in those days. As the secretary of the association, I was asked to welcome our Chief Guest, which I cantankerously objected to. I had my reasons. The first one is obvious. I am very poor at speaking, more so in front of an elite audience. The second one is of a more serious nature - I could not have spoken about Kamala Das without ever having read her. Looking back, I am at a loss to understand how this came about, because I religiously read the Mathrubhumi Weekly, even when we were in Delhi, in which most of Das's short stories and novels were published. The third reason might sound awfully parochial. But the truth is that I failed to understand why anyone would want to convert to another religion, when all religions are as bad or worse than the next one. On top of all this, Kamala Das - she insisted she be called Kamala Suraiya - came dressed in a black burqa and I felt I could not breathe freely, sitting as I was beside her, in my magyar sleeved deep necked and short kurti. Whatever I am, I am not a hypocite. I could not possibly have pretended everything was fine when I was not feeling fine inside. I did not speak. I kept mum.

We stepped down the dais together. That is the time I woke up from my bias and wanted to show Kamala Das, my famed hospitality. But she left me speechless as she turned to me, patting my cheeks with her long hennaed fingers. If my eyes were moist, it was certainly not due to the weather.

All the same, I fail to understand the logic behind covering up - of course, there are no logics in religion.

I reproduce here one of my poems titled 'Geometry of Love' published in the Anthology 'THE SILKEN WEB' by UNISUN PUBLICATIONS, BANGALORE in 2007 to the memory of a brave poet who questioned the male dominated jargons of poetry at a time when writing was considered purely male oriented.

GEOMETRY OF LOVE

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Once you told me
Counting waves
Is an absurd activity.
I can only laugh
At the absurdity of it.

I have done weirder things
I have loved you from all angles
Though I am not good at playing
At the likes of love,
Where geometry does not fit in.

My mind
Dolphin like
Dives at the scent of love
As I sit at this curved beach
With a large and round sun
Plastered on the horizon.

Do you see
That black rock
Sharp and slanting
On which the waves explode
With such disdain
And come back for more?
Absurd.

Love
Is the flicker of hope
On a sordid sky
The image
That flits past a smiling mirror.

One day
We shall sit on the cold of this stone bench
With just a hint of moon above,
Our thighs barely touching
And an ache hanging between us
Till the night
Tortoise slow
Grinds back to reality.

Let us count all the waves
On all the seas
To the very last of them
On unarmed shores
Where the sea and the sand
Are plaited into one
And all absurdities dissolve.

..........................

Copyright @ Unisun Publications, Bangalore

...........

THE ISLAND

2009-05-29T05:52:00.000-07:00

THE ISLAND

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

From the crucible
Of this window,
I can see the island I left behind:
Jutting out into the sea,
Monster teardrop,
Where you lie buried.

Beneath rotting foliage
Forgotten shrubs
Dry brittle winds
And murmurous shadows.

…………………………..

LAMP

2009-05-19T11:14:00.000-07:00

LAMP

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

The steps to the monastery were inlaid in gray uneven granite. On either side of the wide and winding stairs, lay a manicured lawn bordered with flowering trees. The grass was greener than what we were used to in the coastal areas. This was the hill station where flowers seemed brighter and the sky bluer than blue. Tall hexagonal columns rose up to meet the arched portico which in turn led to the wide and silent verandah. From the portico, I could see the clouded valley below and the snaking roads that led up to the monastery.

Sister Melissa led me down the verandah as we filed past rooms with long cloth tapestries hanging from the walls. Silence sat on them like dust.

Sister Melissa led me into a room where you lay. With a name that got stuck in my throat; then and always. A name that meant a lamp. Diya.

You were not sleeping; you were waiting for the klip - klop of my heels on those wooden floors that led to your impish crib. You alternately pushed your clenched wrists into your mouth. You were all of five months old and you fell onto me as soon as Sister Melissa raised you from the cane crib. You gnawed at my neck, painting me with your spittle. Your tiny clenched wrists jabbed at my breasts. Your mouth dragged all over my beige sari, plastering the thin chiffon to my body.

A song must have descended on us. Sister Melissa coughed uneasily. She had orders to obey. Two minutes and that was all she would give us. The breath of a breeze sighed in the room.

Life is an orderly business. There are no ifs and buts to quench your thirst.

I walked back and I thought I would faint. The verandah seemed unending and the breeze had stayed inside beside you. I heard your muted gurgle fade away as I lurched forward. My thoughts flew ahead at a feverish pitch.

Below us, the valley lay in slumber. The tips of mauve gray mountains loomed large. Casuarina trees and cedars whistled in the wind.

As soon as my husband saw my face, he knew what must have happened. There was crazed yearning in my eyes. Mother Superior stopped speaking and nodded at Sister Melissa to leave us alone.

I sat in front of her like an ostrich.

The paperwork broke our backs. It ran into reams of unending pages where both of us had to sign. If I could handle it alone, I would have persisted till the very end. Your spittle smelt of honey and I had this undiluted desire to hold you close to my belly. But you came with a tag of unending bipolar signatures. Half a dozen times the paperwork did our rounds before lawyers were brought in and then it became a free for all. By the end, Santosh took off. His long line of patients were waiting for him. He could not have let them down, no way.

After six months when I dropped in on you, my Lamp, you were not Diya, but Michelle. All the paperwork had to be redone. I went from pillar to post and back to Santosh to get his signature. When everything had been ironed out, it turned out that we were too young to adopt.

I remember your large moist eyes and the black mole on your right thigh and the biscuity smell that oozed from your plump body. To this day.

………………………

BERRIES

2009-05-09T11:22:00.000-07:00

BERRIES

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

We will pluck those mangoes,
The wild black berries
You said:
Walk on glazed grass
Our feet intertwined on slush
We will hunt for a treasure
Under these quivering shades

If freedom
Is the dream I dreamt
Surely,
The paint on our mouths
Come from the berries we chewed
Blue. Black. Violet.

……………….

THE BELL

2009-05-07T10:09:00.000-07:00

THE BELL

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

As you already know,
The loneliest place in the world,
Is the threshold of a new house

I stand here
With one finger
On the bell that measures time
Wiping away past
With a chaotic present

The pigeons on the windowsill
Have flown away
Like the whisper of memories
Towards a wanton sea
Where the seagulls too have taken flight,
Stilled against a pithy moon
In time

You ring a bell
And when I open the door
My flopped shadow
Leans on the door
With open arms
…………….

MY WILL

2009-05-06T21:35:00.000-07:00

MY WILL

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

I painstakingly go over
My lavish death
Glossing over minute details,
Till everything is worked out
Right and proper
Since none lurk behind me
To take care of the essentials

Death is tougher than living
I should know:
I have pledged the lines of my life
To you

As time glides like a goldfish
In an aquarium
And words must transcend time and tide

Eccentricity bills,
Insurance premiums,
A hug and two deep kisses,
All pending:
The latter should dislodge
My soul from the gallbladder
And be free of me

A will is an absolute must madam,
If you want to cross over
To the land of landlessness

Yes
I have the will
And the wish,
Here it goes:

You shall deck me
In a biscuit colored sari
With absolutely fashionable
And well fitting lingerie
In the same color,
Branded, most definitely
Do check for a run in the panty
Without fail

Do away with bathing me
Let not the world see
My unmarked body
Since innumerable pregnancies
Left neither marks nor children
And falsely imagine
That I did not live at all

Load me on an incinerator trolley
And glide it over the rails
Right into the heart of the furnace
Wipe your brows
And switch it on

Let me go up in flames
Leaving
A handful of soft ash
…………………

This poem was published by UNISUN PUBLICATIONS in their Anthology titled MOSAIC ( PIX ABOVE ) last year. Contains some of my depressed poems. The Anthology can be bought on line at info@unisun4writers.com
It is listed in their catalogue.

.................

BOOKS AND READING

2009-05-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

REVIEWS OF FOUR NOVELS

By

CHANDINI SANTOSH

I have been reading at a hectic pace. I gobbled up four books in two weeks and am looking for more. As I have told you before, I have a voracious appetite when it comes to reading.

IDENTITY
By
MILAN KUNDERA

The first one was a novella by French writer, Milan Kundera titled IDENTITY. Kundera is ranked among the greatest novelists of post – war Europe. He has built the novella from a significant moment in life and has placed it on the resulting panic and confusion, set in motion by a series of incidents bordering on fantasy and reality. Like a tennis ball, the narrative moves from the real to the surreal and at times to dizzying heights of hyper reality.

It did not move me, dear readers. May be because it does not touch upon reality as much as it should have. Post – War Europe perhaps demanded calisthenics of a different kind, but the world has moved on from the surreal to the virtual.

ONITSHA
By
J.M.G.CLEZIO

The second one, again by a French author, J.M.G. Le Clezio. ONITSHA won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2008. It tells the story of Fintan, a youth who travels to Africa in 1948 with his Italian mother to join his English father he has never met. The boy is initially enchanted by the exotic world he discovers in Onitsha, a bustling city prominently situated on the eastern bank of Niger. But gradually he comes to recognize the intolerance and brutality of the colonial system in Nigeria. His view provides the novel with a close to real and horrified perspective on racism and colonialism.

The narrative is intensely lyrical. But for a few lines, intensely horrific on the treatment of slaves, chained to each other with their hands on the others’ neck, while their masters think nothing of having their luncheon spread out on the verandah and laughing at the nakedness of the slaves, the novel does not come alive. Dear readers, too much lyricism mars the work. Lyricism does not suit the subject nor does it lilt you to see the actuality. The pain of apartheid does not come clear.

THE COLOR PURPLE
By
ALICE WALKER

The third book, by Alice Walker, THE COLOR PURPLE, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, also follows a similar theme. Written by an African American, (I do not know whether the term is politically correct), it explores the arid life of Celia, a young black girl born into poverty and segregation. Raped repeatedly by the man she calls ‘father’, she has two children taken away from her, is separated from her beloved sister, Nettie, and is trapped into an ugly marriage. But then she meets the glamorous Shug Avery, singer and magic maker – a woman who has taken charge of her own identity. Gradually she discovers the power and joy of her own spirit, freeing her from her past and reuniting her with those she loves. Set in the deep American South, and written in the colloquial South lingo, the book is average at best. The heavy ethnic ‘accent’ jars after a few pages and the human element is missing.

TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD
By
HARPER LEE

It is this universal human element that is present abundantly in Harper Lee’s TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD. This eternal classic has come to me a bit late in the day, but true to its word, the novel stuns you into realizing one’s own worth in a society steeped in prejudice.

Narrated from the view point of two young children, Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the deep American South of the thirties. Their father, a lawyer by profession, fights a one man battle against racial prejudice, violence and hypocrisy. It is an epic struggle for justice at all costs. The narrative is laced with spontaneous humor, which is the essential backbone of any and all good writing. The book won the Pulitzer Prize.

A MUST read for all age groups and manner of people residing anywhere on this planet.
……………………….

PALETTE

2009-04-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

PALETTE

BY

CHANDINI SANTOSH

For sure,
There is a palette of colors
Outside the window:

A small detour inside
Reveal
Deaf ceilings
And mute walls

……………..

New Life

2009-04-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

New Life

By
CHANDINI SANTOSH

I drove out of my h (OM) e and it took just under thirty minutes to bring me to the city of my birth and my life changed. If this line sounds familiar, it’s because you and I have read the mesmerizing opening lines of Orhan Pamuk’s novel, ‘The New Life’, which runs like this – I read a book one day and it changed my life.

I am happy I took the decision to drive out.

It is not as easy as it sounds. I mean if you were to shift your residence to a place just half an hour’s drive away, life would not change. It would surely have to be a miracle in motion. But the theater and the drama behind the shifting and a tiny slice of juxtaposed past would explain to you what you would otherwise not comprehend.

I was born here in Kannur, the northernmost tip of ‘God’s Own Country’, but we grew up in Delhi. Now New Delhi is not what it used to be. It is a buzzing Metro and the capital of India. Kannur is also not what it used to be. It is a city on the rise. Even then you would doubt about where the punch lies. The punch line is that I lived in a sprawling village since my marriage to the day I drove out. As you know, a city is a mindset, but so is a village. If you go down to the brass tacks, all modern amenities that a city dweller enjoys can also be found in a village. And without sounding too much of a braggart, you may safely assume that there are no real villages in Kerala, at least not the kind you would visualize in a Third World country. Now, physical reality is altogether different from emotional as well as rational reality. And this is where the crux of the matter lies. A village is a village because it has a parochial DNA cored on its brain map, which cannot be erased even after the Time Machine has dropped us on Mars and back.

That is the difference that changes lives in just under thirty minutes.

Ensconed here in the seventh storey apartment I find that some coconut trees have grown to this level and that is pleasant information, since all coconut pluckers are in great demand as they have all fled to Dubai. But what has surprised me is the sea level. As I see it, the sea stands much higher than the windows of my apartment, perhaps at the eighth floor level. At times I wonder too why the sea does not come toppling down over the beach and the roads and the coconut trees. Of course, that would be termed the tsunami. We experienced a mild tsunami two years back on a full moon day and it had created havoc in our neighboring state. So tsunami is out of question.

The rooms are sunny and windy and if any of you are interested, I can give you dollops of both these items in a carry bag, free of cost. Like happiness, wind and the sun can only increase, not decrease.

My paintings too feel happy. The painted boat on a painted sea is reveling at its safety away from the turbulence of the sea. Shekure faces the sea and she does a thud thud against the wall, though she still looks haughty. Some are like that. Ruya is serene and as usual gives me immense happiness and an unusual camaraderie, mavericks that we are. Maria Sharapova has pride of place and enjoys her exalted status. Still life of fruits and one of vegetables look well entrenched. Tiger burns only at nights. I might as well gift it to the Society for preserving tigers. They are fast fading from the face of this planet.

Earlier I looked up at every Tom Dick and Harry – shall we change those names – Mohamed Prashant and Sajan, but now I can afford to look down on them. From this height, men look like squirrels scurrying past. (The names are chosen randomly though there is a design in the madness, all three are from different religions.) If the left over ones feel the pinch, they are free to lodge a complaint at Lekha.com. Yes, she is my younger sis and all of five feet eight inches and when she walks majestically in her heels, she looks supremely confident. So now you have to queue up at her door for a pass.

What fun!

...................

The pix above was clicked by my classmate Pravin Madhavan when he landed up at OM last year.

BLANKETS

2009-04-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

By
CHANDINI SANTOSH

I spent some of my happiest years at college. Three years as an undergraduate in a nearby college. We could hear the bells from my house, going gong after every hour, that’s how near my house was to the college. I had a small room at the back of the house, a four poster bed and a wooden slatted window through which I could watch the drumsticks dangling from the tree. Through the square of the window, I imagined those molten seas about to take over the sand on the beach. Not much sky could be seen those days, not through my window, there were trees galore. Behind the drumsticks, a dilapidated shed housed the cows and later the firewood. Further up the swing, slung from a cashew tree on which we would have a riotous time during summer holidays.

I would lie on my bed, head propped up on pillows and my legs tucked cozily under a velvet blanket and reading whatever that came my way. And a lot of reading came my way.

Reading was what I liked best. Reading is what I like best now.

One of my aunts would make fun of my velvet blanket and the soft coziness that it gave me. She would say that no young girl should be so enthroned in velvet and what if no blankets were provided in your in-law’s house? The thought scared me dear readers, imagine a life without the warmth and the laziness of blankets? These thoughts were like concentric circles on blue waters, constantly renewing themselves.

Even better days lurked in my life after graduation. I joined the University Center at Tellicherry for my post graduation and the half hour bus ride from my house in Kannur to the Center gave me iridescent joy. When the bus glided over the bridge on a meandering river, the happy cadence of a boatman’s tuneless song would waft towards me. I liked the coziness and the camaraderie of the small group of students and the old colonial building on a hillock that housed the University Center at the time.

We were thirty students in all, fifteen of them were our seniors, Haroun Rashid being one of them. Unfortunately, we were not even on speaking terms those days. I conversed animatedly with my classmates, but went rigidly solo outside the classroom. I remember that Haroun Rashid would pass snide remarks over my ‘ash – push’ ways in Malayalam, without knowing that I was conversant and well read in my mother tongue as well. I would smile cheekily to myself. Nowadays he tells me that he had mistaken me to be snooty. Now it sounds like it was Siberia he was talking off.

Reading rose to a crescendo during post graduation, as the University Center was blessed with a well equipped library. But all the books that I enjoyed reading immensely were brought me by my friend. He wrote me crisp letters as well. He was hunting for a job.

I read them with my legs tucked under the blanket. Rain tattooed on the windowpanes and my pillows went limp from soaking up all the rain. While thunder slashed over the trees, I looked out for a while before my mother would call out to each of us to close the windows. Those days the rain would go on and on. At times, it rained for days together and the paddy fields would be flooded, the stream rose over the road but our house on the hillock stood like Noah’s Ark. After the rains subsided, I would open my windows a crack to stare at the floating prism of light trapped between the windowpanes. Sometimes, the moon could be seen shining through the intertwined leaves of the cashew tree.

A torrent of memories would cascade over me. Some drenched me to my bones, some are an orgy of light.

After post graduating in English literature with a First Class and a Second Rank at the University Level, I joined a PG course in Journalism & Mass Communication at the main campus of Calicut University.

I was biding my time.

I stayed at the Calicut University Women’s Hostel and my life changed dramatically. I enjoyed the anonymity and the company of friends who came from various parts of the state. I had a room to myself and yes, I smuggled my velvet blanket in.

A turmeric yellow sky spread its wings over the hostel. That is when marriage descended on me like a monolithic thunderbolt.

My younger brother and cousin came to escort me home from the hostel. This duo was known for the most animated conversations in our family circle. Their jokes were legion. Both are no more.

As I stepped into the house accompanied by moaning rain, my aunt greeted me with the news of my wedding. And who am I marrying, I asked her. The doctor, she said.

Four days later I married Santosh at Guruvayoor. We had seen each other only fleetingly for five minutes some five months back. He said Ciao while leaving and I responded equally casually with a Bye.

Life gets bleached at times, what with all those excruciating moments packed so tightly into our souls that there is no time to sit and brood. We are washed up on hooded shores by the juggernaut of time. The minute we garlanded each other, all that was past vanished as if by a magic wand. After all, past is what is cored with a knife on moss tinted water.

We stayed at my sister-in-law’s colonial house at Ferooke, for four days following our wedding. It was s short stopover, as my husband’s house was in Mangalore, though he practiced at Tellicherry.

On the first night, I was ushered into a slanting room. My husband casually asked me whether I would mind having a blanket.

Mind! You must be joking, I said. I would not have married you if you did not use a blanket. That’s what I said.

We used a blanket three hundred and sixty five days of the year. In the summer, winter, spring and autumn. And during rains as well.

………………

DESTINY

2009-03-30T10:18:00.000-07:00

By
CHANDINI SANTOSH

Those mauve mountains
Mock at me again
Well,
You can’t have everything

Destiny is a bird in flight
It lands somewhere
The possibility of the impossible:
Where lands end,
And words begin

………………..

BABA SUITS

2009-03-27T23:59:00.000-07:00

By
CHANDINI SANTOSH

While packing
I stumbled across
Two baby suits
Baby blue and soft pink
In a polka dotted
Chubby suitcase
Never worn
Moth eaten
And smelling of naïveté

………………….

SCARS

2009-03-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

SCARS

The scars and stains
That descend
Lacerate me
Down to the gills

Yes
I know there is a cobalt blue sky
Up there
But where are the legs
That will carry me
To the cracked open window
Through which
Light struggles to come in
Where?

.....................

JOSE SARAMAGO

2009-03-20T00:03:00.000-07:00

CHANDINI SANTOSH

Reviews

JOSE SARAMAGO's

'THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST

.......................

‘The Gospel according to Jesus Christ’ is the most controversial and daring of Jose Saramago’s novel yet. The book more or less follows the chronological paths of the earlier gospels, though it dwells more on Jesus’ childhood rather than the later part of canonization where Jesus metamorphoses as Jesus Christ. Saramago re – imagines the life of Christ in an epochal work, no less important than all the other gospels, but is essentially a fictional and alternate history.

In Saramago’s own words, ‘My Gospel tries to fill the blank spaces between the various episodes of Jesus’ life as narrated in other gospels – with some interpretations of my own’. This would be an understatement since the novel literally shook the very foundations of Christianity, with all its dichotomies.

The ‘Gospel’ follows the life of Jesus Christ from conception to crucifixion, while focusing on a naïve Jesus, who is as human as any other of his times. He is pictured as entirely susceptible to human desires and inclinations.

Jesus is born to a devoted Jewish carpenter Joseph and his young wife Mary. The subtle eroticism in which Saramago portrays Jesus’ conception hacks down all former illogical theories surrounding Jesus’ birth. Just before Jesus is born the census of Rome decrees that all citizens need to register themselves at the original place of their birth. Joseph sets off with his very pregnant Mary towards Galilee, his native place. Mary gives birth to Jesus at Bethlehem in a cave assisted by Salome, a lowly maid. King Herod, who is visited by demons with the news that the future King of the Jews has already taken birth, orders his henchmen to kill all children aged below three. Here, I am reminded of the birth of Krishna, and the imprisonment of his parents, and the decree of the king to kill all new born children. Joseph hastens to save his firstborn forgetting his first duty as a human being. He forgets to warn the others of the impending disaster and is plagued by nightmares all his life, making him an insomniac in the bargain. He believes that he alone has been instrumental in the macabre killings of twenty five innocent children.

Jesus inherits his father’s legacy – the horrendous nightmares, after Joseph is mistakenly crucified along with thirty nine other rebels, who had rebelled against Roman occupation and cruelty. The transferal of Joseph’s perplexing guilt to his son ‘injects the story with the substance of modern day psychology’. This is where the despotic god, thirsty for blood and power, resurrects a celestial tyrant from the annals of the Old Testament.

Before Jesus’ tryst with god in a desert, Jesus has already met and lived with the devil and chosen to cohabit with Mary Magdalene. The miracles are narrated with a tongue in cheek technique, where Jesus himself is surprised with the results that he achieves. There is a fine interlacing of ‘somber realism, grotesque fantasy and wry humor’. The identity of the mysterious beggar at the Annunciation and the strangely compassionate shepherd with whom the wandering Jesus spends his formative years, provide a unique and unnerving twist to the traditional version of the gospel story. This leads in turn to the reconsideration of the age old debate on good and evil.

Narrated in glorious prose, ‘The Gospel according to Jesus Christ’ is an intriguing investigation into the worth of Christianity by ‘the most gifted novelist alive in the world today’ according to literary critic, Harold Bloom. The book portrays Jesus Christ as an innocent human caught in the machinations of god and devil. The provocative conclusions which can be drawn most transparently from the reading of the novel is not surprising to any reader well versed in the writings of Saramago, who reposts all glories to the human spirit. Brutally atheistic, Saramago vilifies religion – religion is always a very offensive institution to intellectual beings.

The novel ends with Jesus defying god’s orders as an angst ridden Jesus rebels by getting himself crucified by proclaiming that he is King of the Jews, rather than bowing to god’s dictum that Jesus proclaim himself as the Son of God. Jesus’ last word on the crucifix is a telling commentary on his rebellion. ‘Men, forgive Him, He knows not what He has done’. At all times I wonder why the nobility that human beings possess and practices is never highlighted as against the unbelievable qualities attributed to god.

The Gospel according to Jesus Christ’ is threaded with unveiled challenges and is designed to provoke. Provoke it did, as it became so controversial that the Portuguese Government had to withdraw the nomination of the book from The European Literary Prize in 1992. Jose Saramago went on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998.

Reading Saramago is an intellectual challenge to all readers, except for those who are severely bent towards dogmatic religionism.

………………………..

Photograph and Sketch

2009-03-13T10:27:00.000-07:00

Photograph and Sketch

I opened my friend’s blog and sat looking at the striking photograph of a Gothic window. I knew immediately that my friend had clicked it. His signature was there all over the pix, the slices of light that slanted in and the pointed Gothic Window rising from ashes. The first thought that struck me was that it was the right material for my mad sketches. I drew a rough sketch of the window just to get the structure right. And then the sketch.

My sketch looks what it is: An amateur and impressionistic sketch of that newly painted and majestic church, which was in the news lately. This is also something new for me. Making a rough sketch and then going for it. But that is what makes me for what I am. I am reinventing myself all the time.

For the original, do look up my friend’s blog – www.reezan-openmind.blogspot.com and for the crankiness, do look at the above sketch.

…………………………………..

ISMAIL KADARE

2009-03-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

Agamamnon's Daughter

ISMAIL KADARE

Reading ‘Agamemnon’s Daughter’ (Winner of The Man Booker Prize 2005) written by the Albanian writer Ismail Kadare was a revelation to me. A novella which hardly runs into a hundred odd pages is packed with the vitality of human life, which is the subject Kadare delves into.

Agamemnon is also ‘a searing story of love denied, then shattered under the chilling wheels of the state’. Kadare interlaces the story of a budding liberal media person and his love for the Suzana, the daughter of a highly placed official, who is tipped to become the head of the state. To attain that exalted and dictatorial post, a sacrifice is elicited from him, crueler than the mythical sacrifice of Ipigenia, daughter of Agamemnon at the altar of enthronement. The lesson that is dinned into the confused independence – craving society is that to be able to reach such a state almost on par with Stalin, one must also sacrifice their own children as Stalin sacrificed his only son, Yakov. ‘Yakov …had not been sacrificed so as to suffer the same fate as any other Russian soldier, as the dictator had claimed, but to give Stalin the right to demand the life of anyone else’.

All natural human activities are curtailed in the Communist Utopia of Albania in the name of socialism. Any dissent is dealt with an iron hand. Ismail Kadare writes, ‘Dissent was not possible. You risked being shot. Not, condemned, but shot for a word against the regime. A single word’.

As I would not like to be a killjoy by quoting much from either the novella or the blurbs on the covers, I would leave it to you dear readers, to read and enjoy the beauty of the brutally direct narration and the amazing vision that is captured in a text that is as tight as a new water tap.

…………………….

Translation

2009-03-07T22:43:00.000-08:00

This is the open and free translation of the cross border verse I wrote, edited and embellished by my blogger friend. You may suggest a title and no changes will be entertained. I lack in patience, if it is a poem.

Untitled

While the world
Collapses all round us
And shrapnels pierce
Your forehead, my neck
And our souls

Love,
Let us hold on
To each other
While it rains Kalashnikovs

Let us sit on this exploded bench
Escape routes are nil
We have inherited this world
We will decide to stay back
On this mutilated earth
Founded on the blood
Bone and the flesh
Of our ancestors

The bubble has burst
But we have each other
More than others can claim
Much more

……………………

The pix of Reena Roy was clicked by Mohan on the sets of the film which was to launch my uncle TCR Chandran as the director. Mohan was the oficial still photographer.

Reena Roy married Pakistani cricketer and dashing opening batsman Mohsin Khan. Roy was to play a stellar role in the above mentioned ilm. More on this in my next post.

To My Wife

2009-03-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

To My Wife

You have left:
You did not slam the door
I sense it
In the irregular hum of the refrigerator
The silence in the kitchen
The uncut onions
The milk sachets at the door
The unopened newspapers
The dent on the pillow
That you have wiped in haste
Leaving a half dent behind:

It bears your smell
Unassailable

The tell tale traces
Of your absence
Has left its mark
On my present

……………………

The pix shows Mohan with his friends at Dubai.

Flight into the Unknown

2009-03-06T22:31:00.000-08:00

Flight into the Unknown

We – my father, Mohan and I – landed in Mumbai on 20th December 1978 for an eleven day stay. Our stay got extended by another week due to unforeseen tragic circumstances.

We were to see off Mohan to Dubai, who worked there as an Architect at a Dutch firm, Devries & Partners. For the whole of the former part of December, we were at our house in Kerala, built by my father.

We were seven children and it was perhaps the very first and definitely the last time we were together. All seven of us dressed in our best, every single day of Mohan’s stay, visiting relatives, watching circus shows, where the whole tent fell upon us with an unusual thunderstorm, going to movies, ( we watched It’s a Mad Mad Mad World) and the six of them had to drag me out from beneath the chairs, where I had fallen laughing, went to the beach where the youngest had to be reined in from running right into the sea, ( he thought he could walk on it – the sea), put on music on our Grundig Three-in-one, which shook the whole village.

By the rivers of Babylon
Where we sat down
There we were
When we remember Zion – So sang Boney M. And all of us did a jig or two in accompaniment.

In Mumbai, Mohan concentrated on his girlfriend, Libby Gomes. Libby in turn, found me too cute to be left out. And anyhow, both of them were trying their hardest to win me over to their side. The opposition was strong as usual, most unlike in Parliament. I was a catch not to be missed.

We stayed with our uncle, TCR Chandran, assistant Director to S. Mukherji of Filmalaya Studios at his Bandra apartment. Mohan took us out every morning to show us Mumbai. I remember striding into the lobby of Hotel Oberoi Trident and the Taj, which were recently in flames due to terror attacks.

On the 31st we shifted to Hotel Centaur, right next to the Airport. The flight was scheduled to go off at 7.15 am but there was a snag and we waited till evening when it would take off.

It was the Boeing Airbus Emperor Asoka and it took off and crash landed, went down the Arabian Sea.

Mohan went without a word. His body was never found.

……………………………..

Mohan wore the very same dark green striped suit that he wears in this pix. He was a clothes horse. Photographed by self.