Salad # 7 : Autopsy

I wrote this in 1984 shortly after witnessing an accident in Kolkata, in which a dog was run over and killed by a speeding truck, competing with another for road space.

Autopsy (1984)

Two trucks rumble
down a city street
pockmarked
with scars of the past.
Two trucks
and hardly enough space
between them
to slide in a
banana.
The bitch, in repose
some distance off
gets unsteadily to
her feet, her middle
heavy with the weight
of her litter.
She makes for the sidewalk….
what sidewalk ? This is Calcutta.
The trucks
pick up speed, each trying
to overtake the other
oblivious
to any other presence
before them.
A blare of horns
A screech of brakes
A minced oath
A muffled yelp
One trucker forges ahead
the other curses and resumes
pursuit.
The bitch lies a long time
mangled, like
wrung-out laundry.
Still, dead mother.
Still-born puppies.
It is evening; the carcass
has since been thrown into
an open drain
for carrion
to preside over it.
The Municipality, you see
is on strike today.
Soon, there is nothing left:a few bones maybe, as after
a chicken dinner.
What did you expect :
A procession ?
A burial ?
A period of mourning ?
There is no place here
for dogs
there are far too many already
most of them
on two legs.

Salad # 6 : Imagery

I was lucky with my English teachers.......they hammered home the point that the language was infinite in its variety, and that it was important, when describing something, to make the subject come to life through the use of appropriate and evocative words. I tried to do this all the time, and the results were sometimes offbeat.

Imagery (1985)

The growth of a tendril
towards a source of light;
that is the meaning of existence

A thread of cotton
on a sea of quicksand;
that is the power of flattery

The action of a flame

on a candlestick;

that is the price of degenerationa

The purposeful crawl of a black widow spider

across its web;

that is the folly of love

The frenzied flapping of a flamingo

adrift in a slick of oil;

that is the futility of hope

Salad # 5 : Hurt

HURT (1985)

I've never been able to draw, but that never stopped me from trying ! Take this representation, for instance. I called it "hurt", and couldn't write about it without drawing it first. The result was very basic, almost childish - but I found it minimalist, and I liked it; which is why it appears on this page today !

The wall. It's YOU. It's the foundation of your existence, and stands for everything you hold true. It is, in fact, everything you stand for.

The tomahawk. A verbal or behavioural wound that some callous soul inflicts upon you. Your hurt gushes free, deep and red.

The legs. Has the rest of you slipped behind the wall ? Not likely - the wall IS you, and you can't slip behind yourself. Or can you ?

You are disembodied. Disoriented. The pain is too much to bear.

The camera. Your audience. There is always a person - sometimes more than one - to watch you at your nadir, to see you sinking into yourself.

There is always a person to laugh.



Salad # 4 : A Man & A Woman

A Man and a Woman (1986)

This is something I penned in 1986, a reflection on the complexity of  the man-woman relationships I had witnessed, been told about or personally experienced.....

The moth and the naked light
The river and the land
The firefly and the moonless night
The seashell and the sand

The stubble and the razor blade
The tempest and the skiff
Bright sunlight and adjacent shade
The climber and the cliff

The artist and the drawing board
The foetus and the womb
The tuna and the fishing rod
The mummy and the tomb

 

The puncture and the tyre
The water and the fire
The leaflet and the dew
Your reflection and you

The indifferent, the rejected
The untouched, the dejected
The sharpened, the blunted
The hunter, the hunted

They’re all hurting
They’re all flirting

Book Post # 3

Here we are again, then - five more books from my collection, reviewed briefly for you.

11.  Sad Wind from the Sea by Jack Higgins

With Jack Higgins'  fan following firmly established, his publishers have decided to dig into his archives and fish out all the manuscripts earlier published under his other pseudonyms, Harry Patterson and James Graham. And so it is with this book - we are informed that this was actually the first Jack Higgins novel. Readable enough, but it lacks the style and depth of storytelling that characterised later books. It’s not difficult to work out why Higgins wrote under so many different names.

12.  Absolute Power by David Baldacci

After reading thousands of fiction novels over a 30-year period, it was refreshing to find, after a very long time, an author whose style is so racy that his books are quite impossible to put down. I did 1100 pages (two novels) in less than a week, and I'm looking for more. Definitely recommended as a stressbuster - whether on flights, late at night, waiting for interviews :-), or in the car on the way to work

13.  I, Lucifer by Peter O’Donnell

Peter O'Donnell can be alarmingly addictive. A writer with an uncommonly slick turn of phrase, a perpetually present sense of wry humour, a great storyteller and resoundingly original......you don't get villains like these in any action novel, nor do you get such detailed research in what appears to be an ordinary set of action stories woven around one character. I know a surprisingly large number of people who are Modesty Blaise fans and quite proud to admit it. That perhaps explains why Crossword  Bookstore has put on sale a retrospective, the entire set of novels, which has made these books available on Indian shelves after a very long time.

You can say it's not your type of read - but you won't say you dislike it. Guaranteed

14.  How to be a Brit by George Mikes

No, it’s not pronounced like "bikes" – this author is Hungarian, so you need to say "Mikesh".

"How to be an alien" is George Mikes' definitive work, and this one isn't all that far behind. I read this 10 years before I actually went to England; read it twice while I was there; and I've just finished reading it once again, chortling every few pages. Whether or not you’ve met and interacted  with a Brit, this is a hilarious read

15.  Trojan Odyssey by Clive Cussler

With Cussler, you get two for the price of one, with each book - a great deal of maritime history and oceanographic lore, along with a cracking good story. This one is not among his best, but is still a good read. I'm actually just finished reading it for the fourth time, over an 8-year period.

Salad # 3 : One-Liners

1984, 1985 and 1986 were prolific years. The reason wasn't hard to find - I'd just moved to Kolkata after 5 years on the trot in Mumbai, and was in the throes of a major culture shock. Here's another sample of the kind of stuff I turned out:

Mirror, mirror
An ego is to a man what a compact is to a woman

Altar egoThe normal male will occasional speak of his “flings”; but somewhere in a closet in a shrouded corner of his memory, you will find a skeleton: that is the story of his “flungs”

Turning pointYou know you’re at the crossroads of life when you try to cross a person on the sidewalk -  and he zigs when you zag

Self-pityHave you ever heard the night laughing at you ?

Apologies to LongfellowLives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives so base
And, departing, leave behind us
Egg all over someone’s face

Salad # 2 : Converbs

Converbs (1986)

• Beauty is grin deep
• Look before you weep
• Beneath the rose lies the scorn
• All that glitters, embitters
• A rolling stone gathers no boss
• An ounce of prevention is cheaper
• Mendacity is the brother of deception
• A bird in the hand is worth two in the bordello
• A thing of beauty is a ploy forever
• If at first you don't succeed - cry, cry again
• Money is the shoot of all evil
• Speech is silver; silence, impossible
• One swallow doesn't make a dinner
• Time lies
• The female of the species is headier than the male
• He who laughs last, is laughed at by the rest
• Better to have loved and lot than never to have lost at all
• Hitch your wagon to a star - you'll be taken for a ride

Salad # 1 : Medley

Here are some random thoughts set down in a sheaf of writings in 1984-85.

Message in a Bottle

Have you ever thought of a wine shop as an anthology, where each bottle is a poem ?



Candid Camera
To those who ask me whether I write poetry, I always say yes.
And then the next question is generally about whether I do free verse or blank verse.
A combination, I say: and they look confused. I wonder why !
I call it "frank" verse.
Isn't poetry - at least, these days - mostly about the truth ?
Isn't it invariably about the way the poet sees the truth ?


Subsoil
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust
It will happen someday to the best of us
Is this why some people shake with mirth
As they trample their contemporaries into the earth ?


Plastic Surgery
You can smell contempt
It seeps out through one's pores and spreads
A steaming film that covers the veneer
Like mascara, it is black
Like lager, it is cold
Like granite, it is hard
And it doesn't come off


The Primeval
In every woman, there's a little bit of man;
In every man, there's a little bit of wolf;
In every wolf, there's a little bit of hate.

Book Post # 2

I thought I would mention a few more books, some of them curiously different. I will add more soon, since I'm on a re-reading spree (much more fun than a reading spree, I assure you) these days.

6. Godel, Escher and Bach : An Eternal Golden Braid  by Douglas R Hofstadter
This is one of those books which you would normally overlook on a bookshelf -not least because it is heavier, thicker and larger than the average dictionary; and in the process, you would miss an astonishing experience. Rarely have the principles of Zen Buddhism been explained through a series of conversations between Achilles (he of the heel) and the Turtle (he of the hare); and rarely has any treatise on philosophy invoked a musician, a mathematician and a three-dimensional artist in a single book. Absorbing reading. If you pride yourself on being a different kind of thinker, I would recommend you peep into this book: peep may well lead to keep.

7. Two States :The Story of My Marriage  by Chetan Bhagat
A remarkable fellow, Chetan. His most hyped book was easily his worst - "Five Point Someone" definitely lacked a something illa illa something. On the other hand, Two States, probably his least publicised book (at least, before someone in Bollywood decided to make a movie out of it), is the one to recommend to readers who want to know what his writing is all about. You don't have to be IITian or an IIMite to appreciate it, but you do need to be Indian. This is a love story about a male and what used to be referred to at the IIMs as a "non-male", though that description clearly doesn't apply to the female lead in this book. There's something in this tale for everyone, I'm sure that even my grandmother would have seen the funny side, had she been alive today.

8. The Golden Rendezvous  by Alistair Maclean

When I was just 13, I met an Admiral's daughter who said to me, "You haven't really read anything until you've read Alistair Maclean". I lost track of her some 30 years ago, so I've never had the chance to thank her for a sublime understatement. Alistair Maclean, a Glaswegian professor who copyrighted many of his books under the name of A.G.Gilach, was an exceptionally gifted writer who could make metaphors do a breakdance. You may or may not like his plots or his characters, but you will have no choice but to agree that few people can do what he does with the English Language. This book, if you will pardon the deplorable wordplay, is a golden example. READ !

9. Notes to Myself : My Struggle to Become a Person by Hugh Prather
I was gifted this book in 1983 by one of the most remarkable people I have ever met.....which is perhaps appropriate, because this is easily one of the most remarkable books that I have read. The illustrations are an inspiration, a single dark leaf and a light leaf on each page, curved at just the right angle to suit the mood of the text. This is one of those books that you read and mutter to yourself, every hundred lines or so - "Good Lord ! My sentiments exactly ! Why didn't I write this book ?"

Tell you what: walk into any bookstore; pick up this book; open it at any page, and read what's on the page; do this for another two pages; and if, after that, you don't buy the book, do let me know !

10. The Other Side of Me by Sidney Sheldon

Most readers of fast fiction have been Sidney Sheldon fans at some point of time or the other; those who weren't, may have seen one or the other of his movies. This book, written like a novel but conceptualised like an autobiography, reveals, to our surprise and delight, that Sheldon was so much more than just a fiction writer - he even won an Oscar ! Worth reading for the detailed insights into the man and his life.

I think 5 books at a time works well ! More in the next, then......