Good Boy Update 1

A friend of mine asked me how the Good Boy feels about being written about.
I don’t know, I said.
Surely he read it, he said.
Yep, I said, but he didn’t say anything.
How is that possible.
Well, that’s just how it is.

So later in the day I asked the Good Boy what he thought about being written about. He still evaded the topic. I persisted.
Finally he said, well I found it so unremarkable, I didn’t think it was worth commenting on.

I’m not sure whether this was a reference to the writing or to the fact of being written about, though it sounds like the former. But hey, there it is.

Walking with the people

I think it would be safe to say that we’re living in very interesting times. Incredibly hard times too for many millions, and it is these very people who will make it more interesting still.
When I look around me, at the state of the country, at its corruption and its politics, its treatment of its own people, whether they be those dispossessed of their lands in the mineral rich Orissa or Chhatisgarh, or those dispossessed of their homes in the slums in Delhi or Mumbai, all those who suffer at the hands of ‘development’ and whose struggles never quite make it to any mainstream, national newspapers or TV channels, I wonder how it's possible that they won’t someday join hands and rise to awaken the middle class out of its 8-plus-percent growth induced slumber.
Surely the conditions are ripe for a people’s revolution? Though I have no idea what shape it would be in, and who would lead it.

For the moment, I am completely taken in by a small people’s movement raising its head in Golibar in Khar East in Mumbai. I’ve been following it only for the last 6 months or so and it’s been fascinating so far. For a history of the movement check:
Khar East Andolan website,
and this post about Golibar on the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan website.
Here is Javed's account:
Invisible Cities Part 7: the Golibar Diary
(Javed Iqbal is a brilliant young journalist who shoots as well as he writes- or is it the other way round? His reportage of Chhatisgarh/ Tribal/ Maoist struggle is insightful, powerful writing. And some of his pictures are haunting to say the least.)
And here is a Times Crest article by Ashutosh Phatak and Chatura Rao.

When I heard of the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan, I was reminded of all that I had read about people’s participation in the design process while researching for my dissertation back in architecture school. There have been many instances and experimentations around people’s participation in designing spaces, usually homes for themselves, from around the world, and it was (then) an evolving process, as it is bound to be. And yet it held tremendously exciting possibilities. More than anything else, it seems only logical that people should have a say in how they want to live. Yes, we need experts to work things out, and sometimes to demonstrate better ways of doing things, but as end users, it only makes sense that people have a say in the kind of spaces they want to spend their lives in. This becomes even more critical for a settlement like Dharavi, which is not just residential but home to many cottage industries providing livelihood to many thousands. But that’s a whole separate debate.

Coming back to the Ghar Bachao Ghar Banao Andolan. I have yet to understand it fully, but from what I gather these people are demanding (apart from their rights over their homes and lands) that rehabilitation be a collaborative process, not something that is forced on them. Having aided in building the city, they feel they are perfectly capable of building their own homes. While I’m not sure how the modalities of that would be worked out, it’s definitely an idea worth working on, and a fantastic initiative on the part of the people. If only our government could in turn, live up to the challenge. At the moment they don’t seem interested. Understandably. Much of the politics and by consequence public policy in this country, is heavily influenced by various pockets of money power. In this case it seems to be the builder lobby. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to assume that they just want the people’s land; they’re not really interested in engaging with them at any other level. The ill-designed and maintained SRA buildings would stand testament to this. ‘Redevelopment’ is the new mantra, and there are enormous profits to be made, if the huge tracts of slum lands in the city can be freed up. This however necessarily involves rehabilitating thousands of people, many of who are migrant workers in the first place. This further involves massive administrative exercises of establishing the number of households eligible for redevelopment, which would be a constantly evolving number, of finding means of establishing ‘rights’ of these people who are not original inhabitants of the city, Constitutional provisions to the right to work and travel anywhere in the country notwithstanding. It involves taking the people’s consent to take away and homes and lands, and to ‘rehabilitate’ them in ill conceived, perhaps even inappropriate high-rise buildings.
None of these are debated in the public sphere of course, because if they were the government would be forced to face uncomfortable questions. And its records of rehabilitation are dismal to say the least. Given this context, the GBGB seems a logical if inconvenient response by the people. And has been largely ignored by the government, as far as I can tell.
Anyway, the Golibar people’s spirited fight for their homes reached a new milestone last month with some people from Ganesh Krupa Society sitting on a fast led by Medhatai Patkar, and the State Government agreeing to some their demands. A month later it turned out that the State Government didn’t want to honour the promises they had made to the people. So the people decided to take to the streets. They decided to walk from Golibar to Mantralaya, and meet the CM yet again. They were joined by others from all over the city, many of who were similarly aggrieved.
I joined the walk for a few hours on both days, curious to see the faces of these people, many of them hardly literate, who were nevertheless driven to fight for their rights by a corrupt, exploitative and unresponsive administration. And they chose to do so in a very Gandhi-ian way, using a non violent but forceful approach. All along the way they shouted slogans. A few articulate young men at the head of the procession constantly spoke about their grievances in the microphone, aiming to educate the people along the way and garner their support. At times the procession halted so Medhatai could give a short speech.
And so it was that to shouts of ‘ladenge, jeetenge’, ‘awaz do hum ek hain’, ‘buildaron ki jagir nahin, Mumbai humari hai’, ‘Maharashtra shasan hosh mein aao, bhrashtachar band karo’, ‘Rajiv Gandhi Awaas Yojana laagu karo, laagu karo’, ‘mukhya mantri samvaad karo’ and my favourite ‘sarkar humse darti hai, police ko aage karti hai’, people walked from Golibar in Khar to Mantralaya over two days, the 28th and 29th of May 2011.
Here are some pictures of the walk.

Women Power!




Curious cab drivers look on and take videos of the people walking. They prbably understand their reasons to protest all too well.


Some walking barefoot.


Walking under ever darkening skies. Soon after this image was taken, it started to pour.


Day 2: I joined the yatra at Lalbaug. Here Medhatai addresses the people...


... to an enthusiastic response.


Sangharsh Yatra!


Yes, this kid marched all the way. A country where children have to fight for rights to their homes (or lands as in Orissa) has much to answer for...


This one kinda 'marched' all the way too!


Ah smiles! I envy the photographer... was it Javed?




'Zameen and zameer bechna band karo'




Yes, it does get tiring, walking all day.


Vada pav- quick snack break.


Walking by the side of the road, so as to not disrupt traffic. The procession walked in a long queue of twos through the narrow streets of Golibar, and by the side on the main roads.


Walking, accompanied by the police.


The tireless Medha Patkar.


Informing the people along the way...


Keeping the NAPM flag flying high.


I had messaged a friend to get directions to Lalbaug, and he mentioned he was driving past the very area. So I asked him if he had seen the procession, so he could give exact current location. "No, flew over them all, I guess... With the new flyover.' Prophetic words, I thought to myself.


Md Ali Road. This is where a man walked up to me and asked if she was Medha Patkar. 'Heard of her, never saw her before.' he smilingly said.


Passers by stop to listen.






VT Station


Negotiating with the Police.


There were barricades near the VT station to prevent the yatra from proceeding towards the Mantralaya.


So the people went to Azad Maidan instead...


And sat there in protest while Medha Patkar and few other representatives of the people went to have a word with the CM.

Coffee post midnight is a bad idea... Contd

Is it the caffeine
that’s keeping me awake
Or thoughts as yet unthought?

My head hurts
from lack of sleep
But I struggle to stay awake
hoping to finish that one last conversation with you
Inside my head.

Coffee post midnight is a bad idea

Is it the caffeine
that’s keeping me awake
Or thoughts as yet unthought?

I met a Good Boy! Part 2

(Continuing from previous post...)

This is scary at several levels, and I am wondering where to begin.
I happened to mention this to a friend and she squarely blamed his Southern roots. While I’m not sure I agree with her, it gives me a starting point. Of course this is a cultural thing- it is, I suppose a very (South? No, I think) Indian phenomenon that the woman you date and the woman you marry are different. I’m not a man and women don’t seem to follow such rules, not at least the ones I know, so I can only wonder at the reasons for this unique trait, so bear with me while I wonder aloud in an attempt to understand. Though I do wish to limit the scope considerably, primarily because the part that interests me the most in this situation is the guy in question or what I have understood of him. Which also happens to be the most surprising part. You see there’s a certain kind of behaviour one comes to expect from a certain kind of people. It’s not right of course to judge people by pre-conceived notions, and yet we do it all the time. So it is that we would be surprised for instance, if an old dhoti clad man in a village suddenly broke into say, Spanish. Ok that’s a bit extreme, but you get the drift...
So as I mentioned earlier, he isn’t from some small town where people, especially men, can still be expected to be regressive in their attitude towards women. He’s from Mumbai, the cosmopolitan city where arguably India’s most progressive men reside. He’s not from an underprivileged economic background or lacking in education. He holds a Master’s degree. He’s not from an underprivileged social background i.e. he’s not from some backward caste; this clarification is for those of you who may still believe that that plays a role. He is in fact from a snobbish upper caste. He’s not from the North, for those of you who think this is a peculiar trait of the brash Delhi/ Punjabi lads. He is a good South Indian boy, and those according to my friend are prone to toeing the line and marrying within the community, a trend that is in any case more prevalent and rigid in the South. It’s not like his childhood or adolescence was deprived of female company i.e. he wasn’t sent to some Boys only boarding school. He’s grown up and studied in Mumbai. He’s not geeky, and shy or incapable of a good conversation like some of those engineer types can be. In fact there’s enough on his blog to suggest female company, love, lovemaking, longing, heartbreak, loneliness; basically the works. He’s not even Mama’s boy, he actually lives by himself though his family is in the same city, and shuttles between the two houses. And while he doesn’t cook, he does do the cleaning himself. So within an urban scenario, have I taken care of most of the stereotypes then? And established conclusively that he cannot be slotted in any of them?
Further, here is a man who gives up a lucrative corporate job to follow his love of writing and films. Here is a man who, as I have mentioned before, dares to write not just of his dreams and aspirations, but also insecurities, not just his achievements but also his failures. He speaks of having lost in love, and of extreme loneliness. He speaks of being lost in general and the struggle to gain composure. He writes film reviews that I identify with. And he writes lovely accounts of mundane everyday things like meetings, which were infinitely exciting for him, for he was on a new unknown path. Of course one could argue that some of that stuff is the writer in him, but even so, it has to be coming from somewhere! I always like to point out about my camerawork, or anyone else’s for that matter- that one frame is not one moment of brilliance, it is the result, or an amalgamation if you please, of many years of a life lived- in happiness, in grief, in regret, in failure, in love, in tears, in beauty, in pain… its many experiences, and the marks they leave on us, and the attitudes with which we go forth after. The same I suppose, would be true of writing.
Which part of him then, is not utterly likeable? Not for regular folks maybe, I understand. I mean if you were a father looking for a match for his daughter, you would make sure he was the last guy on earth she met. But for someone like me… why, here was someone who I could totally relate with. But that isn’t the point I was trying to make. The point is- here is somebody who is clearly a black sheep, as many admittedly, in the film industry are.
And the point is there is nothing stereotypical about the guy.
Except perhaps the dream of making films, which is a dream common to many in this city.

So how does a guy like that come to believe that the only way he was going to get married was if his mother found someone? Is that some kind of submission or delusion, I don’t know.

I feel the need to clarify here that I have absolutely nothing against matrimonial sites or arranged marriages. I don’t believe that there is a gospel truth to anything, including love and marriage. Whatever works for you! However, I do imagine that it would work better for a certain kind of people, with a certain kind of attitude. And as a corollary, it would not work particularly well for a certain kind of people, which is what is relevant in this case. But here is someone, smart and experienced, who is convinced that its not just possible, it is the only way! It makes me wonder if he is losing the plot somewhere, or I am.

But that is only a part of the problem, if I may be allowed to call this a problem. The other part of course, is the one in which the Good but lonely Boy decides he wants company. And sets out to look for it. Please note that he is convinced that he cannot find a bride to marry, but is hopeful nevertheless of finding a companion for all those long, lonely evenings. Clearly there must be something fundamentally different about the two. I am not even going to attempt this one. Apart from the fact that it is beyond my comprehension, it is downright hypocritical. It may be unfair and harsh to make a sweeping statement like that about someone who may well be in that situation for a wide variety of reasons, however I’d be hard pressed to find one in which I would find such an attitude justifiable… Understandable maybe, justifiable unlikely.
I recall he mentioned once in a similar context that he felt he was born in the wrong country. I’m not sure women in any part of the world would be happy with this. Hell, no one should be happy with a stopgap arrangement kind of love. And no, this isn’t remotely about feminism. It doesn’t matter if the positions were reversed. If a woman were doing this- looking for a male companion to fill in a gap, I would find it equally reprehensible.

But what I found even more intriguing was the thought that if he believed it was somehow possible, that there must be willing women as well?
So what does that mean? That there are all these lonely souls out there, looking, craving even, for some kind of temporary comfort? A no questions asked, no strings attached kind of closeness that seems possible only with a stranger or another of their own kind? Is this some kind of desperate attempt to clutch at romance as it should be, natural and spontaneous as opposed to pre ordained, which is how love in their marriages is destined to be (and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.) Is this an attempt at creating a memory to cherish and to live by? Or is it just the thrill of tasting fruit that will soon be forbidden?
Maybe a little of some or all of the above?

The redeeming factor in the case in question was the honesty. There was no attempt to mislead; there was in fact candour in admitting to his helplessness, which I have to say was almost endearing. It wasn’t even helplessness really, just a detached kind of submission. It made me realise that at least he had the kind of attitude that would be invaluable for the route ahead. Or perhaps that’s putting the cart before the horse. Perhaps the attitude stems from the submission to the situation. In any case, while the chances of this guy or his mother finding a companion of the kind he desires from a matrimonial site are questionable, that he will be able to align himself to whoever she picks for him is less so.

I met a Good Boy! Part 1

At the screening of ‘I Am’, I had a somewhat unusual guest.
This guy had contacted me through a travel website, in an attempt at ‘networking’. A travel website is not the best place to network, I remember mentioning to him; that there are social networking sites such as facebook or professional ones such as Linkedin for that, and his response that he is on neither, kind of won him some brownie points at the outset. (I later learnt that he had written to some 30 odd people and I was the only one who responded. Well, what can I say, I’m nice. And that’s certainly not saying very much about the others in this industry, whatever reports to the contrary you may hear.) So I replied, and agreed to meet him, for whatever it may be worth. With a warning that I wasn’t going to be very useful to him from a networking point of view, since I pretty much sucked at it myself. In the meanwhile I read up his profile, found much that resonated with me and figured that anyone who wrote like that couldn’t be some random guy. Or maybe it happened in the reverse order. I read his profile and decided it was okay to meet this guy. Whatever.
And then I got busy doing random shit, and forgot all about him. That’s not like me, mind you. I usually keep my word. So one day many weeks later, when I got another request from the same site, I suddenly remembered him. Wrote again and apologised. I could sense the pleasant surprise in his tone (At the apology? At the fact that I remembered?) when he wrote back to say, ‘No problem. Let’s meet now.’
What followed was two months of correspondence over mail and chat and lots of exchanges of interesting music, links to articles and blogs, about films, life, poetry. Along the way I discovered his blog, about 4 years old. It had ‘various pieces of expression, in varied forms whether it be poetry, life notes, or thoughts on films / books / music or anything else that inspires...’ His writing was honest and heartfelt, and really good in parts. I think what I liked best was the ability to share his fears and struggles, in I suppose, what he referred to as ‘life notes’. It’s a lovely quality, I think- to be able to bare yourself like that and to allow people a peek into your world, even when you’re writing from the very depths of your own personal abyss. There were very distinct phases that one could make out, of personal and professional lows, although the tone in general seemed to have been low for a long, long time. Now that made me think. Or rather it made me rethink my decision to meet him. It also made me realize something about my friends and in turn about myself- that I liked to surround myself with happy, cheerful people. No seriously, its not like my friends don’t have problems, or personal and professional highs and lows. But they all, invariably, have a sense of humour. They smile a lot, laugh a lot, crack jokes and are generally merry, even if that is sometimes aided by alcohol and certain banned substances. And I have friends from all kinds of backgrounds. Architects struggling with clients, writers and directors with great scripts no one’s willing to make into films, NGO workers struggling for space and funds, journalists and documentary filmmakers who see a side of India that would make anyone sob… But even when the going is tough, they manage to smile through it. Or is it? Is it that I am too detached? There for them only in happy times, not so much in the difficult ones. Does no one ever think of calling me when they are sad, or in trouble? Am I only a friend in good times? A troubling thought, that. Many of my friends are incredibly strong people though, I should note at this point. When I think of them, and the images run through my head, I feel blessed that I know so many good, talented, loving, compassionate, creative, beautiful people. It’s a humbling feeling.
But I digress.
So. This guy was anything but cheerful. Nevertheless, I had given my word. So after an exchange of particularly long mails, necessitated by an out of station shoot, in which several threads of conversation had to be abandoned for a more suitable, face to face interaction at a later date, we were finally in the same city and free i.e. ready to meet. This long exchange coupled with the blog writings made me feel like I knew this guy really well already. Now all that was left was to put a face to the name. (That’s not entirely true, for the travel site did have a few pictures, but still.)
So we met. And we did a walk and talk. I wasn’t perfectly at ease, but it was ok. A couple of days after that, he came to see ‘I Am’. And that’s when I realized that it is a bit weird when you think you know somebody really well, but his existence has only ever been limited to a name on Google Chat. So you may be perfectly comfortable with the presence online, having long chats, interspersed with long silences, making you feel as if you’ve almost spent the day with the person (and I mentioned this to him when it happened) but there’s an awkwardness still when you meet in the physical realm. That face, that voice, that body I was not used to, and something seemed utterly unreal. But that mind I was oh-so-familiar with. I mention this in so much detail because I find it very interesting. It’s probably not the first time that I met someone in reality after I met him online. But it definitely was the first instance of having a long online correspondence, over the course of which I came to realize how much not just his thoughts and ideas, but also his fears and insecurities resonated with mine. I had grown fond of the online avatar, the one that I was familiar and comfortable with, and felt I understood well. To meet then almost meant shattering that myth, for I felt it would never be the same again. I think I might even have delayed the meeting a little for this reason! That is exactly what happened too, and it did take at least a couple of more meetings to become as comfortable with the person as I was with the name and the brain that ticked behind it.
It may be clear by now that this was no longer a ‘networking’ meeting. At some point in all those interactions, I had realised that this attempt was part of a lonely guy’s search for companionship. It wasn’t apparently the first time that he had sought company through posts on websites, but its not difficult to guess where the others would have led him, if they led anywhere at all. And he was surprisingly open about talking about these attempts and their apparent failures (assuming that he did indeed speak of all of them.) At any rate, loneliness formed part of our common ground.
Time for another digression. Loneliness is something I am familiar with. You see, I’m not a happy person when I am single- I like to have someone to come back to, to share my day’s stories with, to share the excitement of discovering a fantastic new play or film together, or a shoulder to cry on when things aren’t going so well, to travel with whether it is to town for a screening or backpacking across some obscure country, and of course to occasionally have bitter fights with (anyone who knows me even vaguely knows that that’s part of the package.) Of course all this has mainly been in theory in my head, since I have unfortunately been single for a long, long time now, and family, friends and housemate have had to make up for it. Its not like I haven’t dated, though that too was sometime back. And the guy was absolutely fantastic. Trouble is, we couldn’t be more different. Quite the odd couple we were, more friends than lovers. And so we knew it could never work, and at some point we decided to part. We remain great friends still. I turn to him for every little and big thing, to him and to other friends. But the longing for a companion, someone closer than a dear friend, stays.
So then coming back, loneliness and longing for companionship was then the common ground over which we met, a dangerous ground to meet on, if you ask me. And I was quite aware of that, and had used it as a shield for a while, even in our online conversations, maintaining a safe distance and occasionally frustrating the hell out of the guy, I suspect. It didn’t help though that he was actively on the lookout for a date, and not willing to give up. And it helped even less that he is much younger. So cut to the chase, and we met a couple of times more, and some more walking and riding around aimlessly, and random conversations followed. You might wonder what I was doing meeting someone like that. To tell you the truth, I too thought that he might be a bit of a freak ☺ But then there was something very disarming about his honesty, and besides, his writings seemed to suggest a rather sensitive, passionate person.
And the person I met did seem true to his writings. Pleasant, easygoing, talkative, humorous, well mannered; he was all of that. Yes, I did say humorous- if he was indeed in as much of a low phase as his writing seemed to suggest, then it certainly did not show in his behaviour. Hanging out with him was easy. After the initial hiccup of the first couple of meetings, it all seemed very comfortable, taking me quite by surprise. But of course this was no casual meeting, he was categorical about his intention to date. I was toying with the idea, even though he was quite the kid. And I realise that that doesn’t necessarily have to do so much with age, as with levels of maturity and attitude towards life. But in any case, the age difference did trouble me. Also, questions such as ‘are you a ‘here and now’ kind of person or ‘where is this going’ kind of person’ had set alarm bells ringing.
Soon enough, inevitably, The Conversation happened. Quite short it was too. Here’s how it went. I had mentioned questions swimming in my head. He wanted to know what they were. So I clarified that while I was quite the here and now kind of person, and understood the importance of living in the moment, and spending time together and figuring out how one feels, I was at the same time, not flippant. I don’t get into things unless I mean to take them seriously. This led to a short discussion on the meaning of ‘seriously’. If seriously meant, he said, that it might eventually lead to say, marriage or spending our lives together, then that is something that’s not in his control. That key has been handed over to his Mom. Yes, you read that right. That is exactly what he said. No kidding! And to be fair to the man, I did know this. A simple google search, which I had had the wisdom to do, and later brought up in our conversations online, had revealed a profile on bharatmatrimony.com. He had taken pains then, to explain that there was nothing at all wrong with that route, that he had reconciled to it as the only way he was going to get married, and having done that, had found it easy to write up his own profile, a much more honest account than what he felt his doting mother had written.
So there it is then. I knew of course that such men exist, these good boys who will date and mate to kill time while their good mothers find appropriate brides for them. I just never imagined that one of them would find his way in my life. I think I’m still blinking my eyes in disbelief. It would have been easier if the guy was from some small town, or belonged to a different class or wasn’t as well mannered and well behaved as this guy is. This guy is one of us.
And that is a scary thought.

'If there's a heaven, I imagine it would be a library'

The paper today carried an article about a 5000 sq ft reading room and library in Bandra. A reading room! In Bombay! Brought memories flooding back. I don’t remember the last time I was in one of those- probably the library at FTII, back in 2006. And yet some of my best childhood memories are to do with books.
In Apeejay, my first school, my favourite periods used to be Sports, Dance, Art and Library! We would have one library period a week, and were only allowed to issue one book. This of course was just not enough. So Ritu, the best friend and avid reader herself, and I were constantly exchanging books mid week. These were times of countless Noddys and Enid Blytons and Hardy Boys and Nancy Drews. I remember standing in queue at the chubby, fair librarian’s desk, so she could note down in her register the name and number of the book that each of us was issuing. I also remember wondering in later years if the stuff we read had any bearing on what was picked for us as awards at the end of the year. You see awards in Apeejay (for securing a rank in class is the only one I can speak of) were almost always books. So when I got one of the Classics, I wondered if they were tracking what I was reading, and trying to nudge me towards more serious stuff, or when I got a book of Mensa puzzles, that they were encouraging what they thought was a good habit. The only Classics I ever read, I’m ashamed to confess were the translated works of Charles Dickens (I loved ‘A Tale of Two Cities’), Shakespeare, Thomas Hardy, Jane Austen… There must have been many more but these are all I can remember offhand.
Anyway, even exchanging books with Ritu was often not enough. That’s where the neighbourhood lending library came in handy. I don’t know if these libraries still exist, but they did when I was a kid, and boy, am I thankful that they did! The libraries I visited stored popular fiction. So I got introduced to the Perry Masons (Erle Stanley Gardner actually), PG Wodehouses, Agatha Christies, Edgar Allen Poes, Sidney Sheldons, Alistair Macleans, Jeffery Archers, Arthur Haileys and Robin Cooks. There was a whole phase of court room dramas and crime thrillers.
Comics were a whole different world. I used to devour Archies. I looked longingly at all the Tintins that a friend of mine owned, but they weren’t available in the local library. It didn’t seem to make sense to waste a whole week of reading on a Tintin so I never issued one from the school library, and I’m sad to say remain a stranger to it till date. I did read some Asterix, but didn’t take to it then. I was the Indian comics fan- Chacha Chaudhary, and innumerable other Pran comics; not so much the intelligent stuff like Target for me, though of course I did read those as well. There was something called Tinkle, but I only have a hazy memory of it. Then there were the Children's Book Trust publications that my parents subscribed to for me- I forget what it was called, but there used to be a monthly magazine that I would read cover to cover. Another favourite was Chandamama, which was not a comic of course, more an illustrated short story collection. And oh, the ever fantastic Amar Chitra Kathas! That was an ocean of knowledge.
The 80s (if I remember correctly) was a time of much Indo-USSR cultural exchange. One of those years was the festival of the USSR in India. That was an exciting year. There were wonderful fairs to go to, where Russian dancers with red cheeks would be jumping around in their colourful costumes. There was the Russian circus, which was just the most fantastic thing I’d ever seen. And there was the Russian book fair! This was introduction to the many Ukrainian folk tales, and to Ivan the Terrible. Oh, what joy!
I wonder where I got it from- perhaps both my parents are a little to blame! My father is an avid reader of newspapers and magazines, with the occasional fiction thrown in. My mother on the other hand, didn’t read much. But when she did it was those Hindi paperback novels- the Surendra Mohan Pathak types (that’s the only name I remember.) I tried reading one once- it was seriously freaky! I was amazed at the crazy imagination of the guy.
The move to Sardar Patel Vidyalaya also coincided with a slowing down in the reading. I don’t know why. Maybe I was dazzled with the whole new world that was SPV. It certainly was a bit of a culture shock. Which is seriously sad because in SPV we had more than one library card, if I remember correctly! ☺ I don’t have many memories of the library at SPV, not as many as those of the Apeejay library or the local libraries anyway. This was also a time of deep regret at not having taken up Hindi as a subject. SPV had a brilliant Hindi teacher in Kamal Satyarthi, and I longed to attend his classes. Especially when I heard the beautiful words recited by Sujai and Chetan in the corridor one day- they had memorized Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s ‘Jo beet gayee…’ and were trying to outdo each other! That scene is etched in my memory like it happened yesterday. I tried picking up some Hindi literary fiction around this time, but I was even slower at that, so gave up. Sujai, that absolute sweetheart, is also responsible for introducing me to Calvin and Hobbes, of which I am now a diehard fan.
College doesn’t even deserve a mention. There was little time to read, and given my speed, I was no longer joyfully discovering new authors. I have of course read the one or two odd Ayn Rand, Amitav Ghosh, Rohington Mistry, Salman Rushdie, Marquez, Milan Kundera, JRR Tolkein, Roald Dahl, Haruki Murakami, Manto, Ismat Chugtai (God, I’m really mixing them up!) et al and flirted with Vikram Seth, Kiran Desai, Naipaul, Calvino, Ben Okri, Paul Auster, James Joyce, Kafka, Foucault and many others, without actually managing to finish anything by them. I have also lately been drawn to non fiction, such as the writings of Gandhi, Arundhati Roy, Pavan Verma, Naomi Klein, Malcolm Gladwell and Ramchandra Guha among others. (These are all off the top of my head, it’s hardly the full list. At any rate its easy to see how meager it is.) But the problem now is that I’m awfully slow-anything I start takes so long to finish, I forget where it started!

My attention span has actually reduced over the years… is this something to do with the times we live in? If that is so, and it’s a reasonable assumption, then I’m very glad to have lived through the transition phase, having experienced enough of the old, pre liberalization (for I guess that’s where things really started to change) era of the black and white TVs and limited distractions to actually appreciate that way of life, and not too late for the new Internet age, though I still feel like quite the relic as compared to my younger geeky cousins. I belong to the generation that actually played in the streets, not on PS and XBox consoles and under coaches in Sports Clubs. And read real books, not files on Kindle.

Short attention span notwithstanding, I do still read obsessively. I have to read the newspaper in the morning, otherwise I’m grouchy. If you try making conversation with me while I’m reading the newspaper, I’m still grouchy. I still open up old books just to smell the pages. I happily lap up interesting stuff posted by friends online, mostly on fb and some on their blogs, which I subscribe to. I lose my way often with StumbleUpon. On shoots, you can find me reading articles on my phone (thank God for technology.) Heck, I’ll even read labels on bottles, and medical charts while waiting for the doctor in the waiting room. (And that really is not saying very much for the reading I do these days!!)

I don’t know how and when I lost the habit of reading. And it makes me really sad that I did. I hate it! I remember a time as a teenager, when I was ordered to go to bed because it was way past bedtime, but I was at this crucial point in the story, so I finished the book under the rajai in torchlight. (Yes, I know a lot of you have done that as well.) I just wish I knew how to be that way again.