Finite

What does it take to say to a person, “I love you. I miss you. Very, very much. I’m waiting to see you again, to talk to you once more…” What does it take to not think, “I’m always the one who says it, and that’s why I’m not going to say it anymore.” What does it take to know that you’re probably the only one who’s feeling this way, and not feel belittled by that realization?

What does it take to pick up the phone and call your best friend and tell her that you miss talking to her? That you don’t really care who it is that makes her happy, or how, or what it is that she is doing with her life? That you are afraid - very, very afraid, because she is about all you have - that she is drifting apart?

What does it take to admit to yourself that you aren’t that perfect human being you’d like to think you are, that you aren’t always spectacular, brilliant, but just normal, ordinary. What does it take to allow yourself a moment of being not right, not best, not bedazzling, but just ordinary, and feel alright about that?

It takes a largeness of heart that you’ve only heard of, seldom seen. Immense strength, to be able to recognize your own smallness, your insignificance in the universal scheme of things. Brutal honesty, to be able to see the pointlessness of your ego.

What does it take to be able to tell yourself that sometimes, you have none of these qualities?

What is the level of maturity you need to be able to see all those moments in time when you have been blindingly, shamefully immature? What does it take to be able to tiptoe around each one of these moments, gather them up in your arms and walk away in silence?

O & P: From Lear to here

“O let us be married
Too long we have tarried”
She spoke, as around her he flew.
So they had a quick wedding,
Shared bath, board and bedding
‘Twas the only marriage they knew.

“My Owl, my dove”
“Oh Pussy, my love”
They were heard all over town
He sang and he cooed
While she purred and meowed
Tucked in their eiderdown.

They shared barn mice for dinner
So neither really got thinner
Oh, but look how alike they were!
They liked their meat raw,
Likened talon to claw
But mixed up their feathers with fur.

“Shine my coat, like your plumes you dress”
“Sure, dear Pussy”, and his beak he would press
Into her tail (One must start at the rear.)
She would holler and howl
At the Owl she would scowl
“Don’t rub me the wrong way, you hear?”

She’d fly into a rage; he’d fly into the night
He seldom knew what to do after a fight.
So he’d sit on a tall branch and wonder.
While she’d fume and she’d say
“This is just not the way.
Can he not understand?” It was beyond her.

“But then, he doesn’t know, that
It’s really different, being a cat.”
So she says, “My love, I understand.”
Tries to make him feel better
Her eyes implore him to pet her
But Dear, oh dear! He has no hand!

So at her neck he pecks away
Unaware of what she is trying to say
Distraught, she saves her tears for the shower.
“It’s not his fault”, she tells herself.
“More like the Owl, I should make myself.
Yes. Perhaps that is the need of the hour.”

So when he calls her “My honey”
She smiles quietly: stoic, not sunny.
(Must not dilate pupils, must certainly not purr.)
“There is something amiss.
I am quite sure of this.”
But he can’t tell what, as he nuzzles her fur.

As the days roll by
She grows quiet and shy
Curls up on her side of the bed as he might wonder
“A penny for your thoughts, please tell me what’s cooking?”
“Oh, nothing, Dear.” A tear when he’s not looking.
Does she think this will all just come asunder?

“Her eyes, they used to dance and swirl.
My fiery, passionate, beloved girl.
Happy, she would rub and purr, when mad she’d always growl.
Oh, such a princess! She used to be bratty.
But now she’s no longer…very catty.
I…(gasp!) think she’s trying to be like an owl!”

He hastens to wake her up and say,
“Oh, tell me, my darling, tell me, pray
Why this distance, this air of reservation?”
“For I love you, my love…whatever that may mean.
But I’m fur, you’re all feathers, and this we have seen.
So to be like and owl…it’s …self-preservation.”

“Sticks and stones
Can break my bones…”
Remember that thing about words you’ve always said?
Like Steiner tells Emma, in La Dolce Vita
We watched, remember, over grilled mouse and margarita
I must harden myself, that’s how I must tread.”

For a while he ponders, he looks in her eyes
What would free her of this, her fowl guise?
He taps his talon – something must be done, but what could it be?
He spreads his wing and draws her near
And quietly, softly, he coos in her ear
“If I promise to be a little more like you, will you be a little less like me?”

At this she purrs, her eyes limpid, alight.
She rolls over on her back in delight
“Forgive me, dear Owl, for I gave you such grief.”
“But I was aloof, I should never have been.
Just a bird’s eye view, I always have seen.
Treasured feline, to be back in your arms is such relief.”

Thus tucked in by his side, blissful she lay
He tickled her belly, she rowred, “fowl play!”
Never again did she ask him to shine her coat.
He brought her bejeweled burrs and fireflies
Said, “My princess, my buttercup, my edelweiss.”
And they set off happily in their beautiful pea green boat.

...and apparently all that I require to be able to waste time, is time itself.

Dagguerreotypist

Yes, the name has changed. I'm not Perihelion anymore. I am not 'somewhere on the orbit', and I am no longer trying to 'get a grip'. That was all back then. When I was eighteen, and thought someday, I will conquer the world. That ambition has receded. Not so much due to the realisation of its impossibility as to the diminution of its importance. And the consequent lack of importance of the idea of Perihelion - of flying closer to the Sun.

The name has changed, for I have changed. So I am, now, a Daguerreotypist, a word that I'm not sure even exists. But I like the play - the Dagguerreotype, and the Typist. Since I think and write in pictures, mostly. (Really, it's almost scientifically proven. Back when I was with Orient Longman, and was writing an article on Howard Gardner, I took the test, and it turned out I was more Picture Smart than anything else. Word Smart and Music Smart followed closely. People Smart, of course, was my lowest score.)

And "never a letter", yes. "Always an ambiguous hieroglyph". Sergei Eisenstein, on The Fourth Dimension of Cinema. A post from back when I really was Perihelion (and didn't just carry the name for old time's sake) said "Main Sergei Eisenstein Banna Chati Hoon." Well, clearly, he still inspires me at some level, but like I said, I don't feel the need to conquer the world anymore.

So here it is, a rebus, a cipher, frames from an experimental film, or maybe just snatches of a straightforward story. I really can't tell, sometimes, but they're all I've got, my words and my pictures. To ascertain my location in the black hole of uncertainty that has come from the six years of seeking out the details of things, seeing imperfection: in the world, in people, in myself. And watching, in the process, my own skin moult, cell by tiny cell.

Boyfriend's Trouser!

GAP is running these new ads on TV, for their latest in fashion, this thing they call the 'Boyfriend Trouser'. It has a woman swiping the trousers off her boyfriend and wearing them herself. The idea of the Boyfriend Trouser is basically a pair of trousers that fit perfectly at the waist, but are cut loosely, to look as if the woman is wearing men's pants. Quite cool, I thought, as did a lot of other women I know. They all went and got themselves the 'Trouser.

I, on the other hand, got myself the Boyfriend. Yes, I have always taken things much too literally.

My partner's trousers fit me. Really. This is not a joke. I put them on, the other day, just for a lark, and they sit so beautifully at my waist. They are, of course, cut loosely in the legs, so effectively, they look quite like fashion's latest invention.

I'm still trying to figure out if the joke's on me for being too fat or on him for being too thin. Between the both of us, though, I see there might be some way of saving a fair bit of money while still being on par with the latest in clothes...

(Just for a while, as my sister points out. Up until the time I'm too fat to fit into his pants!)

The Yuppie Intellect

She raises her eyes, just that little bit, to stare into the darkness before her. She feels the warmth of the spotlight on her bare shoulder, she cannot see beyond the edge of the stage, but she knows they are there, those two women of the arts, sitting discreetly among the audience, biding their time, waiting for her to speak, waiting for her to falter. One false move, and she knows they will swoop down on her. As the stage manager moves the light a little to adjust it, she spots, somewhere in that darkness that shrouds the audience, a sharp, if fleeting, glint of steel. Are they sharpening their claws already?

She lowers her eyes, and picks up the mike that lies before her. She thinks, for the millionth time today, of their promise of letting her go if only she agrees to publicly apologise and genuflect before the one among them who had felt affronted. The word ‘genuflect’, she remembers, had been important. She stands up, looks straight ahead into the darkness, and speaks.

I will not genuflect. And I will not apologise. And I refuse to concede to you the ‘Yuppie Intellect’ brownie. Hear me out, oh Fiery Falcons of emancipation, and should you then deem it just to cast me out, a pariah I will be for the remainder of my days.

Gayathri Spivak, Chandra Mohanty, Trinh T. Minh ha – all women of the Third World experience, are critiqued ever so often by others from the same part of the world that they belong to by birth and breeding, as speaking from a position of power, and having, no right, therefore, to speak at all. “Herself living in America and telling to us not to talk English”… or some such. Thinking for us as if we cannot think for ourselves. Imposing, in other words, on collective third world thought, the Yuppie Intellect.

I must bring to your notice however, that this mythology around the ‘Yuppie Intellect’ is but a misunderstanding of the understanding that dawns on you when you are trying hard to stand on one foot, pushing it firmly into the ground, as your other is stretched across to its limit, trying to get a toehold across the Atlantic.

She senses movement. She knows her last statement has spurred the Falcons. She cannot see them in the darkness, but she knows they have begun making their way towards her. She clears her throat. She will not allow them any more ground.

The other thing, of course, and the more important one at that, is that we all want to wear tiny black skirts and tall heeled pumps and charm the living daylights out of every human being out there, firang or not. Heck, why do you think I put myself through the on and off drill of working out and limping around from the pain in my muscles? Not for fitness, although that is most welcome, but, honestly, because someday I want to strut around on a beach in Barbados in a blue bikini. With a white hibiscus behind my ear. The problem, here, is not the choice that I make, because it is a choice. I am allowed that, and that’s all I need.

You fancy the sartorial experience of the little skirt, Falcon N, and I do believe you will look elegant and chic and sexy, and that you will charm the living daylights out of every human being there, firang or not. It probably is a choice you would have made at any given point, but you chose the point in time when it was imposed on you as a rule, not offered to you as a choice. Did you have a choice to go there in your pink mirror worked kurta which you, for some reason always insist on pairing with those purple stone earrings we bought off Colaba? No. From what I understand, it finally did come to you as a rule. A rule that to me, reads: Yes, I think the mirrorwork in your shirt – this thing you call kurta – is very exotic, and very pretty indeed, but I’m afraid it just isn’t good enough for you to wear when you are attending a business meeting in the West. You probably do it this way in your part of the world, well, it’s just not good enough for ours.

And that, my dear friend, is the Yuppie Intellect.

Silence surrounds her, a cold, deathly silence. She knows the Falcons have stopped, she knows they have listened. She waits, with bated breath, for their decision.

Fabindia.....!!!

And this will, most definitely, be the last thing I say today: Nee, I believe, is losing her head, because, as C put it, the country of her birth does not seem to have the kind of formal skirt that she would like to wear when she comes visiting this, the country of her employment. Formal skirt, black, I am thinking, maybe with pin stripes, or maybe not. Definitely with a slit at the back. Chic, she will look, our dear Nee...with a crisp white shirt with three quarter sleeves, and black, sleek pumps to complete the outfit. She should leave her hair be. It isn't all that unruly, unlike mine. It'll behave as it ought to.

But: Why the fuck must she be made to truss herself up in formal clothes in any case? How does a pair of jeans and a ganji take away from her intelligence? Is she less serious about her job if she's wearing glass beads around her neck and irregular stones dangling from her ears instead of tiny diamonds in cold platinum?

Whatever happened to when we were at our best dressed in khadi kurtas, torn, faded jeans, silver jewellery, lots of kaajal. With a jhola too, matched ever so subtley with the rest of the outfit. Subtlety was all it was about, in fact. Putting in all that effort into making yourself look as though you'd dressed most carelessly...oh, the Joy! Nenu cheptunna, Nee...full radical po!

Tanguedia

He looks at her, as she puts her arm across the shoulder of the man she is dancing with. They cannot look at each other, of course: this is a dance founded in the whorehouses of Argentina. Men from good families never looked at whores. They held them, however, as her partner holds her, by the waist, his body arching over hers. He pivots backward, in one swift move, pulling her up with him, and for one fleeting moment, as the few strands of hair that have strayed out of her loose braids touch his neck, he knows all rules will melt away, discipline will shatter to the ground, and they will look at each other. For one fleeting moment, he knows. Until she flings herself across from the man, and that moment is broken. She twirls back, he picks her up by the waist, and swings her through the air, her long, black, wild hair opening onto her shoulders.

He looks at her, his muse, his actress, his lover, as she steps back in position, standing diagonally from the man she is dancing with, there, under the high ceilings of a withering building in Paris. The only light they have comes in through the cracks in the walls, touching the back of her hand as she places it on his shoulder. She does not look at the man she dances with, no.

He looks at her, as she looks back at him.

Tangos: The Exile of Gardel. Fernando Solanas. A film meant to be on the lives of Argentinean exiles living in Paris, but one which must be watched, as far as I am concerned, simply for its stunning beauty.

H, you must watch. Also because I'm sure you’re acquainted with Gardel. No?

Strangeness

Is it strange to open up to a stranger? Or is it that a stranger isn't strange anymore once you open up to him?

Strange.