Narcopolis, a review.

(It's been a long, long time since I reviewed a book. So please forgive my floundering.)

It took me two readings of Narcopolis to feel able enough to write a review. I took exactly an entire year between my two readings, and as the book turns one, I feel it's time.

The first time I read the book, I read it in a hurry. For two reasons. One, because I had been looking forward to it for a while, ever since I knew Jeet Thayil had written his first book. It isn't the biggest of secrets that I am huge fan of his poetry; it feels really terrible to use the word "fan" for something as exquisite as Thayil's poetry but there's no other word, really. I've looked hard and read repeatedly to find something I don't like about the poetry and come up with nothing. Except perhaps, there isn't enough of it. So when the book came out, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.

The second reason, and perhaps more relevant to you as a reader, is because unless you get past the first thirty or so pages, this book is a struggle. You are sorely tempted to put it down and pick it up, oh, maybe next year and read other things. Of this I was terrified.

In just about every review, the seven-page long, single-sentence prologue seemed to be talked about a lot. And I can see why. To begin with, you barely notice it is one long sentence till you are about half way. When it does dawn on you, you are also thinking exactly where is this going. My advice to you: persevere. Unlike the first book of Narcopolis (the story is divided into four books), the prologue is a compelling, textured read. The introductions are many, the voice and tone are set here - in the tradition of a drug novel, a lucidity that you move in and out of throughout the book: parts of it so real they make you hold your breath just a bit, and parts of it so fantastical, that it feels like you've just switched books without realising. I don't want to compare it to being high, but if you've gotten nice and high, and tripped peacefully, you'll recognise that quality here.

This is an intimidating book to review. Partly because of the style itself, an ambitious story telling that walks the fine line between trying too hard and intricate originality. And partly because the story arcs and characters are so intimately intertwined that unless you stick objectively to your own response to the book, you run the risk of picking up every skein that runs through it and discussing it, thereby ruining the book for the reader entirely. The reviews I've read all said the book was about sex and drugs and Bombay and poverty. To me, those things in the book are incidental. Big but still incidental. All the elements are there for it to be a Bombay in the 70s/80s book but it isn't what forms the spine of the book. This book could be set anywhere where the big things happen, where cities don't sleep and people die and live every day. There are specific events that might tie it down to Bombay like the riots, and indeed, it captures succinctly Bombay's past of nearly 30 years. The epicentre of book, where the stories radiate from, is an opium den in the not-so-posh part of South Bombay. But all of this could be anywhere, making it not just about Bombay or drugs or any of that, even though it traces the dying trails of opium addiction as it gives way to more violent, synthetic drugs that kills the dubious tradition of opium dens. But maybe because I like people so much, that I am genuinely interested in them, I find this book mostly about human beings and their severe and inescapable humanness. Their lives and, more importantly, their deaths,

There's Dom, the part-narrator, there's Dimple a hijra, her employer Rashid the owner of an opium khana: to me, the lives of these three occupy the largest chunks of the book. Dimple is a multi-layered, subtly astounding compulsive character, filled with an openness, and sadness that seem irreconcilable. As with all good books, and their lasting characters, I found Dimple stayed with me for a couple of days after I finished reading the book, and through her, the others. Her and Mr Lee's Chinese opium pipes.

Mr Lee is another constellation of pain and fear, who adopts Dimple in an odd sort of way. Or perhaps it is Dimple who adopts the dying old man who leaves those bamboo pipes to her. Here, Thayil gives you a sketch done in swift strokes of a brutal, revisionist China. This part of the book is particularly intricate because of the intimate telling of the way Lee's life unfolds. There are details of his traumatic childhood that feature an obsessive mother who eventually locks herself up and an equally compulsive addict of a novelist father. In between is an obviously ignored and confused Lee, a quality that barely changes as he leaves China and settles down in Bombay, even though he hates it. Thayil deftly builds an entire novel that the father Lee writes, in his own novel, within a matter of pages, and you wonder why. In your seeking of that answer, you realise Narcopolis is like an intricate patchwork of entire worlds and the 292 pages it is written in is just an illusionist's trick because there's a lot more there than that many pages can hold.

(Spoiler in the paragraph ahead.)
Book three is the most compelling of all the books. Thayil pulls out all stops on this one and lets his characters riotously loose. On a spectrum of human ugliness, the book's characters fill all the bands. Rumi, another patron of Rashid's chandu khana like Dom, is angry, arrogant, and filled with such great self loathing that he has to go beyond violence to himself and perpetrate it on other unsuspecting folk. Conflicted, zoned out Rashid who considers Dimple his property and resistingly watches his business slip away as time goes by, Salim, a minor but interesting interlude, who chops off his employer's penis when he's being raped (there's no other word for it) by him, and dies a violent death later. Dimple herself, according to me, becomes denser as the book progresses, obviously acquiring layers but as readers, we aren't allowed more than a glimpse. At times, she's shown as mouthy, other times non-judgemental as Rumi tells her things about his life, later in the book she's shown sad, quiet and sullen. The one thing you do know about her is that she's obsessed with reading, educating herself. It left me wanting to know more about Dimple, who was given away at age seven and castrated too about then.

Do I like the book? Yes, very much. Did it blow my mind? Close, it had my slowly-sinking mind in its slowly-tightening grip once I began reading it and much after I was done. What do I like best about the book? That it was deeply poetic and stark and loaded all at once. That it was unexpectedly funny in so many places, in a way that leaves you unsure if you should have laughed or if you misread it. That the subtexts are many - books, lyrics, histories. That it left me wanting more. What did I not like about the book? That it sagged in places and took a while to build steam. That there a couple of typos in the edition that I have (hard cover Faber and Faber). That I am thrown by details like Guru Dutt being referred to as Bengali (it may also be interpreted that he became an icon for Bengalis), little inaccuracies like 'katha' for 'khata' (to eat). These are little things, sure, and I am probably nitpicking, but I trip over them.

A tough year

Every year by April, you write a post saying this has been a better year than the last. And February or so next year, you write a post saying the past year was the most difficult year you have had. When it became a cycle, you realise that as you age life only gets tougher. In fact, when you are particularly depressed, life is actually just a series of moments that look forward to life becoming easier. Then a year passes and you are making more money but you are also spending that much more, so there's no real money for you to save, as your parents have been telling you to and that is just terrible. Because you are a girl and you can never leave the home you grew up in, figuratively. If you have had great parents, you can rarely ever say, I don't care, I am happy with who I am. So you go past a year thinking, damn, that was one difficult year. And then another year goes by and you've have the worst marriage in the history of bad marriage days and your think, wow, I'd rather have little or no money than this and anyway, why did I get married. The next year peeks in and you say, you know what, this is MY year and no one is going to ruin it for me. And you make plans and lists and you are so focused and driven and convinced that everyone around you wants to marry you because wow, you have just inspired everyone with your resolve to write your book lose weight make more money travel more places tweet less sleep more and be happy. February comes around and everything about an approaching spring pisses you off, you have dark circles from not sleeping enough, your body isn't beautiful, you've been breaking your resolutions like dawn and man, life is tough. Now you stay away from your friends because you don't want their pity. But you forget they don't pity you. All they have time for is a quick call and a prayer once a month, when they think of you. And because it is possible and okay to lend a shoulder online, they chat with you as you pour you woes on like syrup. They respond appropriately, but what is there to say because they have a deadline to meet and they still love you and send you a big hug. Send you a hug. Prayer hug deadline. That is enough. Your birthday month arrives and you think, ah another year older, let me take stock. What have you achieved you ask, and when you get answers you don't like you make everything look like an achievement because hey, you are just human and how much can you do, right? Then you think of Hedy Lamar and the woman who comes to cook and clean your house and you feel small like pebbles. Then you justify to yourself that they are them and you are you and the two can never be the same. And that's your lying, snivelling way out because there's no way to go. Only truth or lies and right now the lie comforts. So you want to kill yourself, painlessly and with as little trouble as possible because you do not want to inconvenience anyone in death, and you wonder if you should send off your passwords to someone who really cares and who are not your parents your husband. You think of the promises that you leave unfulfilled, the restaurants you really wanted to eat at but didn't take the time to, the vacations you planned but were too broke to go on. Maybe spirits can do all that, you think and hope everyone who depends on you will not be disappointed and that they have a good photograph of you to turn to when they know of your death. And a memory. You can't decide on the method of suicide and the moment passes. You judge yourself. Another tough year you say and it is tough. You know it and the people around you see it. And guess what, they judge you. But guess what's worse, you judge yourself worse. The worst. Then you start peddling furiously because you don't want to judge but you want life to be easier, and you want to be saner employed taken care of cherished independent happy and that's nowhere in sight. So you get off the cycle and realise it hasn't gotten you anywhere. You were peddling in the same place all this time and your goal seemed to be moving all the time, farther and farther away till winter came and your visibility got so bad that you couldn't see your destination any more. So you get off the cycle and found it was still summer where you started because you haven't moved. Only your legs got stronger. Your destination is ahead of you, far away, and you have strong legs. Maybe you will walk now. The year seems easier now that you are walking, the pace letting you see that life will always be difficult, that as long as you want to be anywhere but here life will be difficult. But if you don't want what is out there, how do you get more. Then you think you shouldn't want more because thankfulness and gratitude. Fuck gratitude. There's enough of that around among happy people. And they say that's the key to their happiness. Or at least that's what all the Facebook posts will have you believe. You get tired of the glamorous faces of your friends taking pictures on all their travels and there's a bit of envy too. And of all the great places they eat at, the lives they live online, the you call yourself pathetic because you are sitting there looking at their lives and the last time you had a holiday was whoa, god knows when. And you don't even believe in a god and now you feel the sudden politically correct need to not say god's name in vain. You need to find another name or word that you can use while you exclaim but you feel stupid, replacing such a small irrelevant word with another deliberate one and giving it meaning, because then you'll need to find and replace it in every other context and you can't think of a better word to use when you orgasm that's not pretentious because if you can't be you at least when you are having sex then you should have just found a method of suicide long ago when you thought about and done it. Because who are you if not you when your clothes are of. You judge yourself again because you have clothes and some people don't, you have sex and there are kids getting raped and you haven't done a thing about it, not even outraged because you are just so full of sadness for everything that nothing is enough. All you can do is fix yourself so you can fix other things. You start to plan and your difficult little life gets in the way, and dude, what a tough fucking year.

Questions for jealousy

Irrational jealousy,
When did you become me?
Long ago when I had a man
On the left palm of my hand
I told him to go play.

When he came back, because he knew he could
I couldn't smell any kisses, neither numbers, nor wood.
And it was okay then. And we could talk
A lot like friends, more like lovers,
Once we'd both gotten over the shock

Of finding things this normal, no questions asked.
And I liked to hear the odd story, of sex that wasn't as great as ours.
I asked him about love, and whether they had better breasts,
All he said was a faithful no. Truth or kind lies, he left me to guess.
I never knew, then, nor did I care

To investigate the run of adult play
I knew love was to be shared, not locked up and hidden away.
So now that you have me, jealousy, you bitch, all I ask of you
As you viciously smoke me like a cigarette,
If not shared love, what must I feel instead.

A bit of a Kiss

She leaned across from where she stood close to him, unable to smell anything on him but a whiff of trust and interest. They'd been talking several hours and all she wanted to do was make him aware of her affection for the evening, affection for the undivided attention she got from him. And perhaps to say she had given him the same.

It was a scene out of a cliche. A softly glowing city was all around them, as they stood anonymous and glorious, devoid of the popular notion of love. And yet free to love the way they pleased. If all this moment required was a peck on the cheek, that was okay. And if it involved a more intimate kiss, an inclusion of man and woman, that was okay too. Nothing mattered but an exchange of secret information: "I am having such a good time."

She leaned in, gently registering he was taller than she had first assumed. She stood on pretty tall heels and he was still taller than her. She laid her palm on his upper arm and decided to give him a peck on his cheek. But as she leaned in his head moved just a little towards her, taking his cheek away from her and gently offering her his lips. Everything about him was gentle. The way he talked, the way he charmed her through the evening so that it came to this, the way he was wicked, all with a gentleness that she didn't gather till he dropped her home safe and went away.

As his face turned, her eyes struck confusion. Should she be love struck and kiss him on the lips, or should she just keep this a friend-dinner casual and stick to puritan plan A? There's little room for decision making when an attractive man is making very clear what part of his face he wants you to kiss. Even if there was room, there's even little time when you've already leaned into his warm space, so tantalisingly close to his beautiful shoulders and ordinary smile, and you don't know where to go without looking like an owl trying to get comfortable. So she did the safe thing. She kissed his cheek. And said with singular fervour, a warmth in her voice that was the perfect foil for the cool December evening, perfectly ordinary words. "I am having such a good time."

And him, with his world of experience and his world experience, looking unsure, like a teenage boy, hands in his pockets standing close and warm, head leaning in just a little, stopping now, moving again, till he got her to respond to the gentle manipulations of his open, hesitant face and head. A little dance, a little wondering of his own, should I kiss this woman, will she kiss me back. And she leaned in, eyes open, so close that she went cockeyed and, curious, her neck stretching towards his face, a face she'd loved, in a way, for a good decade. A kiss of those who were having a good evening, no tongue, no mad gnashing of teeth, a chaste old fashioned kiss. For her, a kiss like never before. She wasn't sure who broke the kiss. The city around them was still cool, psychedelic and suddenly it looked different to her, like it had been washed in the rain. But it hadn't rained. Unless you called this slow excitement of wine and a kiss rain. In which case, it had.

They went back to their table and talked some more. She hoped he wouldn't remember a thing she had said all evening.

Three wishes

"I have three wishes," said the four year old, her young arm around the neck of an impatient mother, who wanted to go back to adult things that gave her joy.
"What are they," the mother asked, patiently. It was bed time after all.
"My first wish is you'll never forget me, my second is that you'll never send me to live with someone else and my third wish is you'll never go away anywhere."
The mother laughed, head thrown back, her heart warming and melting at the edges, delighted that someone wanted her this badly. She checked herself immediately, though, and spoke to the daughter, addressing the little child's insecurities. "I am never ever going to forget you, monkey," she told the little girl holding her lithe body tight, and plastering a kiss on the child's hair-strewn cheek. "I'll never forget you, either, Ma," the little girl replied, her voice suddenly slowing down and the day gradually disappearing from her breathing. The little girl was asleep.

***

Fiza was awake, crying. Her fingers moved to the corners of her eyes to see if she really was, or if it was just the dream struggling to make itself real and get past her eyelids. The fingertips came away wet. She wiped her eyes and woke up fully from her nap. Someone brought the coffee in and Fiza asked what time it was. The clock in the room had stopped working and the air was still. She figured it was still early in the evening, even late in the afternoon, because it was flatly bright outside, making everything look uninteresting. If you could look at anything in this blasted sun, that is, she thought.

Sipping her coffee, Fiza wondered why Maryam had asked her those questions last night. She wondered about the insecurity this child felt so deeply that she had to ask her mother not forget her. Am I not doing enough, Fiza asked herself. Like all young mothers, guilt was Fiza's unwanted and surreptitious partner, arriving without announcing and staying stealthily in cool, dark corners of Fiza's life; almost childlike in its approach to her, waiting to pounce from unseen places and scare her so hard that she lost a year of her life, in one instant of a wicked "boo!"

Fiza laughed again. What a funny little girl Maryam was! Imagine a mother forgetting her own daughter. She quickly ran a check of all of Maryam's favourite fairy tales to see if any of them had characters that forgot their daughters. She could think of none. Fairy tales were an easy target. If something discomfiting or completely out of character occurred, Fiza choked her immediate worry and went back a few steps, to check what the child had been reading (rather, read to) or watching. And she was almost immediately right. If one day was a trail of almonds all along the house and a frightened child under the bed behind imaginary bars or scrubbing the floor with a forlorn face, the next was a desperate seeking of a kiss on the mouth with closed eyes. Thank you, Hansel and Gretel and The Sleeping Beauty, respectively. This, however, didn't look like the work of stories. This was entirely new. And Fiza wasn't sure she had dealt with it well. What did the parenting books say about dealing with insecurities? She couldn't remember. All she could remember was Einstein saying, or having been known as saying, "if you want your children to be brilliant, read them fairy tales." She just might have taken that too seriously, though.

Those three things Maryam had said, Fiza hadn't decided what to do with them. So she got over them; it was just one of those things kids say, and that she must make an effort to reinforce her love for Maryam in more ways. And of course, not forget Maryam, she thought as she giggled again. Where was Maryam anyway? It was playtime and yet there were no sounds of the kids from the neighbourhood playing, there was no squealing of the girls as they got excited over absolutely nothing, and no sounds of thundering feet tattooing the lawn in an impromptu design. Maybe it was too hot to play running games. Maybe they were playing board games. Well, that means a few more minutes in bed for me, thought Fiza, complaining quietly about how tired summers made you.

She lay back down on the pillow and picked up the book she was reading, filled with serene gratitude that she was well looked after and didn't have to really work hard at all. Even the cooking, unless it was a special occasion, was taken care of by a retinue of staff that her home was blessed to have. All she had to do was approve their decisions regarding the house; the rest of the day was hers to do as she pleased. And she did a lot. A woman of fearsome intellect, Fiza's interests were as wide as they were deep. From working on her research and giving underprivileged primary school children lessons, to tennis and collecting and documenting pottery through the ages - everything in between too. The afternoon heat, the slow pace of an Umberto Eco book and the increased tiredness she felt these days did their work and Fiza was napping again.

***

She was in the same dream with Maryam. This time the room was dark, the air was cool; as usual Maryam and she were in Fiza's large bed. The pillows were soft, the covers smelt lemony, the heavy drapes were drawn, the hum of the AC comforting. Maryam was restless and asking questions, talking about the army of things that decides to ambush a child's mind just before bed time, every single day. "I have three wishes. My first wish is that you'll never forget me. My second wish..."

***

Fiza woke up to two people talking gently in the room. One was a beautiful woman Fiza had never seen before. A high forehead, dark, ebony eyes that were at a slant, a smile so perfect it was a crime to have it stop. She wore a white cotton shirt with pin tucks and a pair of jeans, her hair neatly brushed and lay gentle on her shoulders. Earrings that dangled with a playful light touched her jaw now and then as she moved her head while she talked quietly to the man sitting next to her. He was listening to the woman intently and Fiza found herself wanting to ask them what they were talking about. But that was while she was still sailing on the warmth of the nap; as soon as she shook it off, she wondered who these strangers were and why they were in her room, especially since they had paid no attention to her and hadn't realised she was awake.

"Excuse me," said Fiza, and the couple stopped mid conversation. The young woman came forward and leaned in to kiss a very surprised Fiza'a cheek. "Sorry, I don't mean to be rude. I was just taking a nap and woke up to find you here. I hate to ask but I don't know who you are..." Fiza trailed off her question, recognising how embarrassing it was to both parties, this name and face forgetting. The young woman's face, something happened to it. A quick flutter of eyelids, a tightening of the skin around her forehead. What was... A shock of wetness in her eyes. "I'm sorry," began Fiza, appalled at her upbringing that she would forget someone's name and face. Especially when they had come to her home.

"It's okay," the young woman said laying a gentle hand on Fiza's wrinkled old hand as a nurse came in with the day's medication. "It's ok, Ma. It's me, Maryam."

*****

Day

A million babies, all trying to get out of my skin.
Million, thousands, I do not really know.
As many babies as there are pores, straining and struggling
To get out of my skin.

So I kneel on the floor and offer my tears up
To an  all-consuming sun. May it never be night, I say
And attempt to bind it with the promise
Of a million pregnancies, under my skin.

For when the night comes and everything is cold
In the summer's darkness, the stabs under my skin
As many stabs as there are pores, escape and rise
Wisps, ghosts, smoke rings of pain.

And locked in my room, bound with handcuffs
Of compulsion to be an adult, I lie rigid, hot,
On the left of the bed, watching
A simulation, a feeble dance of all that hurts.

And yet I cannot see. I do not see.
All I see is a cloak of muslin
that the wisps and ghosts and smoke rings make
And the muslin turns heavy, dark, velvet.

The sun! The sun! I cry as the velvet
Morphs again and turns to lead, with laces, a vest.
I close my eyes, I wait for the inevitable. Hands crossed, laced
A thousand suns explode behind the orange of my eyes.

On Innocence.

Have you seen a summer frangipani. One that blooms just after spring? It is a miracle of form and life sciences. It sheds all its leaves. Patiently, without a hint of emotion, taking off every single leaf that it wore through the year. Unabashedly displaying its anorexic structure. Strong in places. Knobbly in some, lean, accusing and aspiring in others. You wonder why it would stand still like this, shorn of its natural baggage, why it would last skeleton alone, and then you see at the tips of its giant finger-like accusation, bunches of furiously blushing flowers. Fragrant and bold, and yet under that exhibitionism, a blush that is hesitant, stopping at half a petal. The waxen, flagrant frangipani. That is innocence.

*****

Watch with the sun in your eyes, a little girl of three. Four, maybe. Not quite a baby but not quite grown enough for the word to be inappropriate. Watch as she climbs with uncoordinated hands and legs up a slide, completely graceless, completely serene. She is unaware, and sweetly uncaring, of the impatient kids who queue up behind her. There's a mini storm brewing behind her of children's bursting, cyclic energy waiting to explode at the top where they let go, and plummet gleefully on the slide. There's queue of scorn and good upbringing behind her, a temptation to push her aside, even over maybe. A serpent of impatience and cruelty waiting to just so that she is done with her slow turn on her hands and they can all have their quick thrill.

The girl climbs on, unaware and therefore uncaring of what's going on behind her, body bending to the demands of the ladder that she just cannot tame under her wayward hands and legs. Her face shows no fear, only a heartbreaking earnestness towards her task. She knows not that other children do it better than her. That those behind her are like her in size, shape age and impatience. She knows not that she will not have their empathy. Her foot slips. There's a barely suppressed groan from behind her, as the serpent gets ready to strike with the venom of unkind words, the kind you find only in playgrounds of children. But she's a star. She has not let that hurry her into climbing like it would an adult. She climbs only like she knows how. And suddenly, just when the snake-kids behind her are at snapping point, she is at the top. The sun is setting and you can't see her face. Only the glorious silhouette she's become, the gold of a setting sun tattooing its gentle fire all around her little form, trying to confine her in its soft-filter picturesqueness. Except the sunlight didn't account for her hair; it's a mess and plays with the breeze, collecting the sun's fire from her outline and sending it away in waves from the top of her head, like a well-meaning baby Medusa of light.

She's up there and because her face is hidden in the light, you can only imagine her smile, the gently raised cheekbones of her pure face, the only clue. A smile that comes from anticipating that cold sweep to the earth, releasing every little fear and embarrassment she boldly hid in her heart. In that brilliant moment, she starts to sit down and the summer cotton of her frock billows all around her in a perfect umbrella. The breeze collaborates with her victory climb and the umbrella is a poster for all that is innocent about her. Despite it being there only for a second, because it is there only for a second. Before she sits down, and decides to claim fruit of her journey by taking a tiny, exciting ride down, down, down to the earth. She, as the axis of her one-second umbrella, too is innocence.

*****

My grandmother, a woman of love, humour, music bad teeth and temper lost most control of her arms and legs due to a particularly bad case of spondylosis. In time, she was confided to her bed and her room. She ate there, watched tv there, read books there. She saw visitors there. She ate her apple there. Drank her coffee there.

Her skin was smooth, like a tautly-stretched, moist balloon once it has burst. When she would eat something that needed to be picked up with her hands, I would watch her. Her hand made a slow, heavy, waving descent to the bowl she intended to pick up her piece of apple, or orange, maybe banana, from. When it touched the bowl, it would rest. A limb in thought. Her fingers with taut, smooth, honey skin would stretch like a scared little ET and try to pick up a piece of fruit. The sneaky old piece would shift just when she got a grip on it, leaving a minuscule pool of nectar in is place. Her hand would try again, lifting like a dumb giant and dropping back into the bowl. My grandmother had no will against this recalcitrant limb. The fruit would behave itself this time, recognising the limitations of the bowl it was in. Yet, elfin by nature, it would slip out again to hide between other pieces of fruit. Third time lucky. She would have the fruit between her exquisitely awkward fingers and the slow rise to her mouth would start. Sometimes, she won, some times the piece of fruit, finding its freedom in the folds of her starched upper cloth. The days she won, I watched her gnawing slowly, laboriously at her fruit and when she had a few satiating bites of it, she would turn to me a give me a big smile. I have never seen anything more innocent.

*****
Sometimes you look into the mirror and all you see is everything you've become. The faces you put on for people, all you. Different parts of you. Even when you cry, it's a face. One that you gaze at through your pain, despite your pain to look for aesthetics. Are you beautiful when you cry. Those days when you smile at your reflection and you can't see anything right with it, those days she you make faces like you were a child, tongue out, nostrils flared; indelicate, ugly and utterly free. Suddenly, one day, there's no face to put on, no tears to wipe delicately, no bad teeth to look at she you smile, no faces to make, and you've had enough sleep, you've eaten well and there's nothing that happened the day whole day that has made you exciting. An absence of the mean, a presence of the cognisant. You are perfectly ordinary. And that does not make you sad. Look again in that mirror. Because, that too, is innocence.

A nose knows

Stand in the sun some day. Let your skin just start to burn. Only a bit, like the point in a kiss where it loses the pretence of love and leaps headlong, taking the rest of your body, into lust. Stand quiet in the sun. Let sounds of a quiet afternoon become yours. Let go of all of those sounds and choose the one you love. I love the spy-scrape buzz of a sleepy bee or a vain dragonfly's wings. If neither exist, I turn my closed eyes, shuttered by the orange of my afternoon-eyelids, and listen for the rustle of leaves. If they refuse to oblige on afternoons that are still like death, I listen for the off-key musical horn of some trucks on the roads a little away from the patch of green I stand in, soaking in the sun.

Don't worry about a tan. Just today. For me. Just stand in the sun and get hot. Warm. As much as you can take. Tease yourself away from the scorching orgasm of standing in the sun. It is tempting. To stand there till you get so hot that your spine tingles, you lose control of your body and a flowering of goosebumps takes over your skin and you shudder with pleasure. Don't go there. Go if you must. But I suggest you stop just before. Frustrate yourself just a little. Come back in the shade then. And smell yourself. Your palms, to begin with. Then the skin on your forearms. Don't hold back from touching your skin with the tip of your nose as you breathe in the sun that's soon leaving your skin in waves. Taste it, if you like yourself enough. Tell me, when was the last time you knew what your own skin tasted like? Do you remember much more than the way your own lips taste, or perhaps the skin above and below your lips, on a salty, sweaty day, when you took an especially big, graceless lick?

Maybe you don't want to lick. Maybe you don't like it. That's alright. Focus on the smell. Very few things come close to the cacophony of scents that have just rushed forth to your skin from your time in the sun, like a rash of translucent jellyfish rising towards the shallows from the sea's promising depths. What do you smell? I smell different things. Sometimes I smell a tan. You know the smell, don't you? Your skin got shameless in the sun and went out without protection. No umbrella, no sleeves, not even a pale sunscreen. Your skin's makeup is all last-night's debauchery, simmering in its unwashed sexiness. That's the smell of a tan: slowly smouldering, a burning just like jealousy.

And sometimes I smell fruits. Summer fruits. Like the cliches in Bath and Bodyworks. Except my skin does actually smell like summer fruits and the Bath and Bodyworks potions and pots only tell me what summer fruit smells like. My fruit skin smells like the cutting, acidic smell of the not so ripe cashew fruit. It promises that you can, at some point, bite into it carefully once ripe. Carefully so that the acid doesn't burn you. Carefully so that juice that trickles down the bumps of your chin and reluctantly hugs its curve doesn't drop on to your clothes and leave a mark. Forever. Sometimes, my skin smells of fruits. It warns biters off, this summer fruit skin.

Other days I smell the acrid smell of development. Of construction and petrol, of screeching bad drivers and the lecherous eyes of men. There's the smell of smoke and spit, the greedy, dark, scary layer of pollution that I threaten with cleansers, with soap.

Soap. Those days I smell of soap, it takes me back to a place that is free of all the different things we want to smell of today. It takes me back to simple days. And the men who used to like my simple skin. Why should I smell of lavender and remind the man who touches my skin of a box of his grandmother's handkerchiefs? Why should I smell of heavenly vanilla or compulsive chocolate to the man who likes to smell my skin, fresh from under the sun?

Smelling like flowers makes me sad. I can never smell like the insistence of fragrance that a true gardenia is. The ones they bottle usually smell surreally beautiful. So beautiful that I am disappointed by what a real gardenia smells like. Jasmine, tender, pure, lavish jasmine, throwing with strong, yet delicate, arms tiny fishing nets of fragrance that are actually stories collected from a time so long back that the pale petals themselves have forgotten. I like my hair to smell of jasmine sometimes.

But there's a purer smell that hair holds secret and only reveals to nameless, faceless, hiding lovers in the dark. When a woman raises her arms, fighting with the gentle weight of her breasts, to undo her hair and release vapour-serpents of a scent that is uniquely her own. A mix of sweat, shampoo from a day ago, oil that the scalp lets escape, and the gentle whiff of her whole day that snagged in her hair. I like that smell too.

When she lifts her arms, she gently rolls the sea of smells her body becomes. From the delicate bay of the back of her ear, where her earrings dig into her like the nails of an insistent lover, emanates the smell of her warmth, the true smell of her self when it isn't cleansed by the sun or the wind. Nuzzle your nose there, if you ever reach the neck of a woman, and find a fragrance that is visceral and grabs your guts in its shadow-play coils. Because the more you go seeking it, the quicker it shifts, a shimmering hologram harlequin. So difficult to find, so easy to kill with a cruel splash of your favourite perfume.

A man's palm, callused, when clean carry the smell of burden. Vehicle smoke, cigarettes, some times, much to my chagrin, smells of food. They carry the smell of not wanting to smell feminine. And so they lap up the fragrances of what they think women are not supposed to smell like.

But have you slept with a man's shirt while it still smells of him? Oh I know, it is a sentimental thing to do and you eventually grow out of it. Or grow out of missing him so much that even an unwashed shirt will do. A man, when he isn't smelling of the thing that makes hot women look comfortably sex seeking, is actually a nice thing to smell. His hair, his arms, his chest, everything smells of a warm day that you can't douse. If you can hear his heart beat, get a little adventurous and look for smells you haven't looked in before. His collar bones is a great place to start. The backs of his knees. His chin. Summer and ripeness and if you are lucky, absolutely no soap or after shave,

When there is water, what need does one have of smelling roses, or fruits, or candy. Feminine hygiene products? I see them in stores and it always makes me wonder, makes me think. Here's another way of taking away what is woman's: her natural fragrance one that she shares with no one else. Here's another way to make one woman smell like another like another. Just like summer jasmine, white, wonderful and without will.

Reclaiming Malayalam

As far back as I can remember, I have spoken at least three languages. Most kids who don't grow up in their home state in India are like me. We speak our mother tongue, English, and the local language. If one lives in one's home state, two languages at least.
As my kids grow up and I see them adept at barely one language and floundering with another, I am taken back to my own childhood. We had kids around us who didn't speak English, even if we went to schools that taught in English. As a result of that you had to pick up the local language or Hindi at least. My kids have no such compulsions sadly.
I remember once long ago, when we moved to a city that didn't encourage mixing with the locals and their language being a foreign one. We were outside in a park, where many other Indians were hanging out as well. My mother happened to say something in Malayalam and my father shushed her gently because there were other malayalees about and he didn't want them to know we were malayalees too. In those times, it was rare for either of my parents to speak in Malayalam because we spoke a mix of languages at home and our Malayalam, my brother's and mine, was severely broken at best.
That memory, somehow, stayed with me and now I have no idea why. Maybe to germinate as this blogpost. Because, you see, most my life, I took pride in not "looking" or sounding like a malayalee. No thick accent, no curly hair, no bindi with dresses, no chandanam paste or the forehead with oily hair left partially open. Worst of all, no Malayalam. Around 15, I found a desire to learn the language and I moved back to India. Till then, every vacation was a skilled act of communication. We went to my parents' villages in Kerala where people came to visit with us. We'd say hello and never know how to go beyond that because there isn't a "how are you? Fine, thank you. How are you?" fixed politeness set in Malayalam. They'd ask us questions in fluent Malayalam in the dialect of the village we belonged to and both of us would be painfully uncommunicative as we had no idea how to respond in more than one word. And the relief that was felt when someone visiting us knew English was almost tangible. But there was a curious other feeling with it. One of surprise. We assumed, as children, people in Kerala didn't speak any English. And when someone did, it impressed the pants off us, especially if it was without an accent. An accent that we learnt to ridicule in a rather supercilious, sneering manner. (Today the accent is just as amusing but I embrace it with the love of cultural influences that I find in everything we do as Indians. A lawyer joe is a fantastic mispronunciation of lower jaw and I would never ever exchange that for cookie-cutter uniformity that more and more malayalees seem to be achieving these days.)
When I moved to Kerala for two years, when I was 15, I had the pricelessly enriching task or explaining Shakespeare and other English writers to hostel mates from Malappuram and Vayanad, from Kuruvalingad and Pathanamthitta. Girls who wrote fluent English but were lost when it came to speech and cognition. Try explaining English poetry in a language that you are ridiculously inept at and you'll know how educative it is for both involved. It gave my a thrust to my rising love and respect for my mothertongue. It is probably when I started owing it as we'll, when I began understanding that being a malayalee or knowing the language was nothing to be ashamed of, as I had believed most my life.
Till that day, an incident that occurred when I was about 14 used to enrage me. I was waiting for my mum to pick me up from dance class and it was late in the evening. No mobile phones then, so I used my dance teacher's phone to call home and as was our wont, I spoke to her in amid do Hindi and English. I hung up and turned only to find my dance teacher s husband, who had no business eavesdropping on the conversation, asking me why I spoke in Hindi. I didn't know what he was asking me, so I guess I must have given him an unsatisfactory reply. He pressed one, aren't you Malayalee, was that not your parent you were speaking to, then why were you speaking in Hindi. This explanatory question made more sense and I replied it was because I didn't know Malayalam and was more comfortable in Hindi. I will never forget what he said then. "Then you are illiterate. Someone who doesn't know their own mothertongue, is illiterate. Go check the meaning of the word." I was a teenager who was hurt and shamed easily in the company of adults. I think I gave him a bit of argument but you know how Indian kids are brought up right, even if they are illiterate? You never argue with an adult, especially someone not family, especially not in full view of other people. You just agree to be shamed and come away hoping you develop and thick skin.
For years, I debated with myself about his criticism. Was he right? Was he cloistered in his view? Should I care? Today I believe he was harsh in his judgment but he was right in awakening my conscience and helping me do something about it. It added to my desire to explore Malayalam.
Recently, someone whose views i respect, said that your mothertongue is where the roots of your culture, your "sanskriti" lie. Paths to your own roots open up when you embrace your language and see its beauty and purpose. I have seen it in my own experience. Just the many dialects and how they came to be, if one is scratching the surface, is fascinating and informative. It is also divisive, if you go into it with a parochial vision but more than anything else discovering a language, one that you heard even before you were born and one that has been handed down from generation to generation, a language that allows you roots and lets you belong is a gift. A mothertongue allows you to abandon it but it is in your blood. And one day, sooner or later, it's call rises and there's no turning back. You can either be guilty forever by ignoring it or then you can answer that call and discover yet another key to the quest of your roots. Which is what it did to me.
Even today, tons of friends who have grown up away from Kerala cheerfully say, I am from Kerala but I don't know Malayalam. But they know all the lovely songs, they watch the fabulous movies in secret, they cannot but help flaunt in front of their friends that they are mothertongue illiterate. One way or another, the abandoned mothertongue gets her own back at you. Like a new convert, when I started reclaiming Malayalam and my Malayali-ness, I used to be severely judgmental of those who were the person I was. But that was early in the piece. Now I feel empathy and pity that they'll never discover all that Malayalam has to offer. The incredible punning, the layered poetry, the sharp and mindblowingly intense literature. I still don't read Malayalam fluent enough to read its literature but I never pass up a translation or the opportunity to listen to someone read it aloud.
When I find the gnawing need for Malayalam in the deep maw of my conscience, I begin with popular culture - song lyrics - and move on to carefully chosen translations after which I can only marvel. If this is so astounding in English, my imagination isn't rich enough to conjure up the Malayalam.
The striking thing, however, is I don't find this kind alienation and rejection among many other people of other languages. The Hindi speaking use Hindi militantly, even looking on at non-Hindi speakers with astonishment. Tamilians are largely protective of their language as the odd obstinate, un-helpful auto driver you may speak to in Hindi will let you know. I haven't known many Kannadigas who disown their language, but that is my lack and the truth may very well be different. Punjabi, Bhojpuri and many dialects of Hindi, Bengali and Gujarati find wide and a gentle acceptance in popular culture. Before you shoot me down, I am aware these are sweeping generalisations but if I were to get specific, it wouldn't be any fun.
I am sure I am getting old but this has become something I felt like writing about when I see my kids may never have the opportunity to develop the skill it takes to converse in good Malayalam and well as colloquial Malayalam and gain enjoyment from it. They'll probably go through my own journey. What I hope I can inculcate in them is the desire to find their own path to many-skeined arms of their mothertongue.

Matters of the heart

(Who knew losing my hearing would give me inspiration? If you go further than this, let me know what you think).


"I love you forever. Will you?" He asks.
She thinks a bit and says, "it's quiet out here. Where' s the milieu?"

"Oh you wanted a busier place? You should have just said."
"Alright, she says, let's go to this place you mentioned up ahead. "

Walking, he asks, "But I thought you'd like to do this somewhere private."
She is looking around as she says, "Sure, I am adventurous. I'd certainly like to try it."

"So shall we head back then, to where we were sitting?
Important moments need quiet, not a soul around, not even a thing."

"Eh, What's that you said? All you want is a fling?
Well I'm not that kind of girl, no matter what you think."

"What in the world are you on about," he says
And he stops suddenly and grabs her face.

"You haven't heard a thing I said, my dear
For gods sake put in that thing in your ear. "

"Oops, sorry," she says as she fiddles in her bag for her hearing aid
"Silly me. I was wondering why the cloud in my ear stayed.

"And before I put it on, i will have you know
This is exactly why I love you and will do forever more