Packing

I was looking at our bookshelf. It’s a wooden thing, hiding the wall and its stains. It used to be shiny. But it’s tired now. There must be some few hundred books there. Borrowed, bought, forgotten. It still sparkles sometimes, when the letters on the jackets are legible, when I stand on the sofa and reach for one, when we switch on the bright lights above. It’s like a distended pocket we’ve tailored to house all the books lying around. I’ll miss the bookshelf. And a million other things which I’ve started to pick and keep with me and see me through this change.

Now that I leave in a month, I’ve started packing.

The noisome fumes at the public urinal, a sting of betel juice and tamarind from the chaat vendor, the heady fuel vapors at the petrol pump, the familiar odor of dust that’s settled on the book hawkers lining golpark, the whiff of mustard on the succulent roadside fish fry and a thousand other smells of hurried people and lazy sunday mornings, trams and rickshaws and gutter sewage, all packed into one little resilient bubble of familiarity inside me.

The other day, I crossed the kalighat metro station. It was Sunday and the shutters were down. I felt something interred deep within me move, an insipid yellowed photograph that started to twinkle. And suddenly the delight and dismay; impatience, relief, anxiety and the countless other little bits of me associated with that ten minute commute to college became infinitely dear in a single fleeting pang of clarity.

Then my car started to move, and I was lost again.

Leaving isn’t tricky, letting go is. But I’ll pick the scab in one painful flourish, because I know there’s new skin below.

Someone asked for a line on what the Department of Microbiology at St. Xavier’s College means to me.

My first true sense of competence with an incubated petriplate, my first experience of delving into knowledge at its very best, my first taste of harmony in turmoil, my first second home.

Pathetically limp. It’s like trying to trap sunshine for the dark nights.

:-)

I think I’m deficient in expressing myself, and there’s something vaguely stifling about it. It’s no stray inkling, it’s a conclusion derived with considerable certainty. Had it not been for the fact that I’m about to dunk myself in relatively unknown waters, this rather unsettling tendency wouldn’t have caused so much of a ripple. But as of now, without the slightest embellishment I can say that the inability to emote could well be the cause for future turmoil. The silver lining lies in my capacity to watch and follow. I’ve been trying to do so for quite sometime now, but yielding exasperatingly miserable consequences. Undoubtedly I’ve underestimated such a reason for concern.

I seem to have deluded myself into thinking I could write, but the more I read what I’ve written, the more I’m convinced otherwise. My earliest posts did have this naïve earnestness, a hint of nervous hesitation. I’ve retained the candor somewhat, but diluted the apparent charm and lost the pretty words. Hence the oppressively bland posts which leave no room for revival.

A slight consolation lies in the fact that I’ve been able to recognize the signs alluding to a social mirage I had until now failed to discern. Which brings me back to the initial hurdle. Of expression. There was once an unexpected burst of victory. But that was apparent in the virtual word, and sometimes barely so. Besides the virtual world unleashes it’s own army of html tags expressing elation and sorrow and most things in between with such brutal crudeness, it took me a few bouts of suppressed discomfiture before I allowed my cursor to select a yellow plastic face that supposedly signals I’m happy. Or smiling. But the mechanics of this whole process is indisputably valuable. By replacing my usual full-stops with yellow faces, I find I’m magically laughing, gracious, ecstatic, disgruntled, irate and a host of other things with minimum effort. Pure genius, as I quote a friend.

But to translate such practiced ease of expression from the virtual to the real world is no cakewalk. Once I’ve sloughed off the excess reluctance, I can hope to take my first step. There isn’t any excuse for my indolence, but even so, a conscious effort doesn’t necessarily mean a correct one. Although, the only risk I run is of being misread. And I’ve dealt with that before. Frosty, condescending, rude. This time it’ll probably drift to what-the-hell-is-wrong-with-her. Oh well. A few stumbles in the bag, maybe, just maybe, I’ll slip right in.

I’m on my knees. I’ve soiled my face and hair, there’s dirt everywhere. But I’m trying hard, so hard. Smile I say, and draw circles in your head. The dirt will cleanse itself.

One day at a time. One day at a time.

There’s a certain comforting harmony in the very little bits and pieces of everyday existence that is so inherent, I’d be hard pressed to take notice at all. But harmony assuring as it might be also has that undeniable monotony to it. Discord is intrusive, but perhaps it has a rhythm of its own. How else could I hope to find happiness in life? A life that has become so exhaustively banal, I’m looking for joy in half baked arguments and discarded movie tickets.

Laugh at the silliness of it, at the echoingly empty grandness I call progress. It’s not a growing diffidence you’d associate with my achievements; it’s just that clichéd jolt of realization that we won’t be aching to claw out each others eyes anymore. It goes without saying that you will always be the bully, loud and obnoxious. But I shall miss the ringing in my ears long after you’ve stopped shouting. Because it’s different. When you raise your voice, I’d still hear it over the din.

I’ll learn to pick out the right clothes, do up my eyes the fancy way and turn on the charm like you taught me to. I’d keep a smart tongue and sparkly teeth. But when I get back home, take off my heels and rub my sore toes, I’ll learn to keep the blabbering to myself. Perhaps I’d be half tempted to make a call, but then I’ll count the hours, gauge and sigh. I’ll stoically put my story aside and go to bed. I’ll learn to untangle our togetherness, I’ll learn to grow up.

I THOUGHT I was not alone, walking here by the shore,

But the one I thought was with me, as now I walk by the shore,

As I lean and look through the glimmering light-that one has utterly disappeared,

And those appear that perplex me

-Walt Whitman

Traitor

The human mind is an ever-baffling source of wonder. It’s like a bright riddle, apparently simple and colorful, but the deeper you dig, the murkier it gets. The labyrinth of thoughts that snake through the many layered human intellect are those expert tools, clicking away methodically and efficiently to deliver the right choices. Of course the machine is not perfect, it’s only human after all. So often, there are distractions. The magnitude of their infection varies, but their purpose never sways. They gnaw at our healthy forest of thoughts, threatening to influence our outlook and perspective. They make martyrs out of some, monsters among others. Monstrosity in itself is not entirely an absolute concept. But human laws have their own ways of recognizing and weeding out the canker that infests our race. The hitch is, although our system is competent in its endeavors, it fails to acknowledge the basic crimes of human nature that are in fact worthy of the most severe retribution.
Trust is not merely the matrix of all human networks, it’s the fuel that drives our decisions, fosters hope and keeps us rolling. And by hope, I mean that light at the end of the tunnel. It is clichéd in it’s brightness, but nevertheless the magic is hard to ignore. Hope has so many surfaces, so many ragged edges and blunt ends, its true significance is now just a wisp of vapor, hard to define, yet conspicuous in it’s paling shimmer. It infuses into the very foundations of human action, making it our one indispensable necessity. So anything that induces a crack in our perfect pristine existence is certainly not welcome. Because one crack will beckon other fractures and the only noise audible will be our voice, looking among the many broken splinters for something we had lost long ago. And trust that’s lost will take a lot more than time to return. Initially it will cost us our dreams. Gradually it feeds upon our peace. Finally it will tear down the sense of security that has sheltered us so loyally. It’s a meticulously slow process, and it spans an entire lifetime of happiness.
In the meantime, the fire that started it all and caused our life to go up in smoke will move on to greener pastures. We’ll be too shocked by the betrayal, too bruised and battered by all the deception to run after the deserter. Inner torment is inconsequential in the justice system. It will fail to see the blood because we’ve bled inside. No blood spilt. No charges pressed. The killer goes scott free.

Cambodia : Phnom Penh

…when the plane was busy making a dusty bumpy landing on the tarmac, I could see stretches of green fields punctuated by little clapboard house roofs here and there. And then the potted green colour of plants in the cool airport waiting room, not a leaf out of place. Looking at the polished doorknobs, the immaculate lapels, the synthetic brightness of the flat television screens and dollars being flung on every counter, it was hard to believe that this country had faced the largest proportional genocide just 30 years back. Through the haze of immigration complications, I could make out the starched uniforms, the practised smiles. Yet the eyes held a different story for every Cambodian we came across. In a regime that had wiped out a third of the nation, every person had a history of loss, a new tale of agony that was to stay forever.

But Phnom Penh the capital, had in no way stayed behind. Youngsters perched on motorbikes whizzing through the night breeze along the riverside; night clubs and flashy food joints crowding every street corner; and that “ happy” life to tempt those with the green bills. The rest were also there. Not hidden away, just overlooked. Outside the museum, selling Lonely Planet copies, or playing with apple peels on the pavement, showing me the way to my car. It was a sickeningly simple social ladder. Two rungs. The highest, lost in clouds and the lowest, left to grapple in the mud. A gaping void in between.

Yet, the air hangs heavy with a new scent as one approaches The Killing Fields. Even the grass is a different green here, a green lost in the dark ditches that lie scattered all around. Sometimes the stories are engraved in blunt words for tourists to read and sometimes the wind’s feel on your skin reminds you. The ditches have coughed up thousands of skulls that now adorn the shelves of the memorial. A mound of clothes have been dumped on the first level belonging to all the corpses that were recovered. A wooden post says: “ Clothes were cleaned with deodorants in 1988”. And above it, rows and rows of yellowed bone, the teeth still glued, the jaws still fixed, the gashes on the cranium bearing testimony to Pol Pot’s famous words: “Don’t waste bullets”. Bludgeoned on the head and buried unconscious.

The ideology of Pol Pot (head of the Party of Democratic Campuchia also known as the Khmer Communist Party) which later defined all Khmer Rouge activities in Cambodia from 1975 to 1979 was based on a radical form of agrarian communism. So the country needed cleansing of those who didn’t till their land. All but farmers were methodically executed, the figures rising to 7.5 million (1975). The driving motto was “ To keep you is no benefit, to destroy you is no loss”. Execution and burial of thousands took place at “The Killing Fields”, victims being transported from the prison “Tuol Sleng”, which has become another popular tourist attraction in Cambodia.

Orginally a school building, the black boards at Tuol Sleng have heard more than history lessons. The blood has long since been washed away, the stench removed, the bits and pieces of flesh and skin mopped out, yet the rusted iron shackles peek from the brick torture cells, the sunlight fails to illuminate the metallic beds, the enamel plates, the cuffs and ropes, and the large photographs screaming at you from every room at Tuol Sleng. Black and white shots of burnt corpses lying on the same beds.
The dust on the huge makeshift gallows looks down upon the immersion pots below. Now empty. Yet when I stand so close to them, the camera clicks and buzz of tourists wane. I can hear the water gushing out as prisoners were immersed, hanging upside down from the gallows.
And then the faces. Apprehensive, frowning, angry, surprised, smiling, wary, expressionless. Hundreds of mug shots looking straight at me, the prisoner numbers pinned on their shirts. Some didn’t have shirts, so the paper was pinned on the skin. The twinkle in each eye veiled, the tears frozen, the gaze steady.
I look away. Outside. Where the chirp of sparrows flitting in and out of the windows have dampened the cry of prisoners, where the scent of blossoms wafting up from below the gallows have replaced the odour of singed skin and where the menacing barbed wire and the stained prison walls look up to the cheery blue sky above…bringing promises of a new chapter.