Charlie's Chatter

Alice

charlie — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 00:08:10 +0000

I haven’t been here in Florida long enough to know the vagaries of the weather, but March is clicking along with a lingering overtone that this is probably the last time I will be able to use the words “lovely” and “sunny” to refer to the same morning. In a couple of months it’ll just be that muggy, humid heat that makes the outdoors unbearable. And with spring break drawing to a close it is certain to be a while before I can walk down to Lake Alice again and plonk myself by the water for no reason.

There’s something very odd about the first time you visit Lake Alice. The turtles seem too large and the ‘gators too small, the trees seem to grow right out of the water and there’s this creepy tingling feeling that something’s going to crawl out of the water and sneak right up on you. But soon you get used to it. And on a spring day it’s a beautiful place to visit. All nice and quiet with the cool wind blowing; it’s quite a large lake with a few islands sprinkled around. And you can see the turtles swimming aimlessly about, getting right up to the bank before swerving away at the last minute. And there’s always an alligator or two floating aimlessly about with fish swimming around it and ibises pottering around the shore like some obsessive gardener in a weedy flowerbed. In places the water and the shore blend seamlessly under the reeds and willows of the swamp, at others they stand starkly apart, tense and abrupt. Of course the customary egrets and cormorants and herons hang around, never in any real hurry. And butterflies and nondescript brown thinglets flit around in the foliage. I’m not sure if there are too many flowers around but the forest seems real enough, and dense too. It’s pristine, and beautiful; you could imagine sitting there forever.

Yet I cannot bring myself to do it. I cannot bring myself to love the place. For all its beauty, it seems unreal, like a face without a name, cold and distant, more tolerant than welcoming, foreboding perhaps, and even uncaring. It’s beautiful, but completely foreign, familiar enough to recognize, yet not friendly. It’s like some vague acquaintance, who greets you with alacrity but at once turns taciturn. Someone you approach with a smile and hang awkwardly around before that vague sullen disgust of an overstayed welcome settles on you and you leave. Maybe next time I’ll just nod curtly and be on my way.

Growing Up

charlie — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 20:16:54 +0000

Gregor Samsa awoke one morning to find he had transformed into a monstrous vermin.

Adulthood has a way of arriving like the rising tide. First the gurgling ripples, heady with joy as they tickle the toes. Then the torpid puddle around the ankles, always there or there about, never noticed, until it so rudely ebbs away leaving nothing but sand in the toes and the memories on soaked jeans. Then the waves arriving in earnest, up around the thighs and yes, it’s a little further in that your mom or dad would approve of, but you’re growing up now aren’t you, so you laugh and stay, to feel the First Little Corruption power brought. And then before you know it, there you are, waist deep in the sea and every now and again, the ocean throws you this way or that, leaning on you like some inglorious drunk, as you struggle to stay on your feet, under its brute strength. And then you usually trudge back to the beach, for there are some things that must not be tempted except, now that isn’t an option and all that’s left is for you to jump in and try to swim to Japan.

Growing up is the realization, at once comic and tragic, of how woefully out of place you are in what was once home. What you once thought was home. What was yours and familiar and loved because it was so familiar – now drifts wanly like some watery streak of raw pink on a grey metamorphosis, tepid like some inadequate adjective, lingering on with the bitter aftertaste of a metaphor pushed too far. Congratulations, you have grown up. Gregor Samsa lives.

Some matters of fact

charlie — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 00:49:00 +0000

Last Saturday, I went to watch the season opener for the Florida Gators at the magnificent, Ben Hill Griffin Stadium here at Gainesville, Florida. It was an amazing experience.. cleary, “Go Gators” is a way of life here, one that I am more than willing to subscribe to, at least for the next couple of years. 90,000 fans, packed into an arena, chanting the name of the local football team, led on by the “Pride of the Sunshine” complete with a repetoire of moves, crafted over the years to keep the audience glued for the full duration of a game – it is just complete entertainment. And when the Gators take the field for the first time, under their entrance video, with AC/DC blaring in the background, welcomed by an arena full of fans screaming fans, it’s enough to make one’s hair stand on end. The Ben hill Griffin Stadium has sold out every single game since 1989.

“This is the Swamp, home of the Florida Gators”. Greetings, Gator bait! We won the game 34-12. A random comment from my room mate, Sidhartha drew my attention to the large number of African-American players on the field, which in turn reminded me of a story I came across in school. In 1949, Johnny Bright became the first person of African American descent to play college football for Drake University. He was there on a sports scholarship. College rules saw him make his first appearance for the side only in his sophmore year, and he very quickly established himself as the leader of the Drake charge. He remained in this role throughout his college football career and indeed, much of his professional career. In his junior year, 1951, he played in an infamous contest against Oklahoma State University where a Caucasian player, Wilbanks Smith of the opposing team, knocked him unconscious three times before shattering his jaw in a fourth tackle of what was eventually confessed to be a racially motivated attack on the quarterback. John Robinson and Don Ultang, of “Des Moines Register” present at the scene captured and published 6 photos of the incident, and ran a story on the incident in the newspaper showing to the nation, and the world, the shocking brutality of the events and the ugly underbelly of racism running through the USA at the time. They won the Pulitzer prize for the piece that year. Decades later Bright , in an interview remarked “There’s no way the incident was not racially motivated”, an opinion corroborated by some of the players of the Oklahoma State teaminterviewed for the article. They spoke of how Smith and their coach had specifically targeted Bright based on his race.

A lot of the players taking the field on the 4th of September, 2010 were looking to fill in the shoes of legendary Gators teams of the recent past . Their grandfathers grew up in a world where until 1958, they would not even have been allowed to study at UF, and for whom stepping on to a football field was basically an open invitation to grave physical injury for no reason better than the colour of their skin.

***********************************************************************************************************************

My apartment here in Gainesville, Florida is in the middle of a whole bunch of trees and bushes and other nondescript shrubbery and looking out of my window each morning (or wandering down the path to the supermarket, or strolling to well, anywhere else), I usually spot a host of birds of all sizes and colors that I do not recognize. The Americas separated from Asia, Africa and Europe about 540 million years ago and the species here have had plenty of time to evolve independent of their old world counterparts. So virtually all the species I see here are completely different from what I am used to seeing in India. And the other day that really started pissing me off, due in no small part to the apparent lack of academic activity (an opinion that has since been corrected). So I went to the Science Library and pulled out a copy of a field guide to the birds of Florida, and amidst cardinals and hummingbirds and a distant relatives of the darter and other utterly unfamiliar species of birds, I spotted the Common Mynah. Amd then the Hill Mynah. and then the Collared Dove and the Roseringed Parakeet and Redwhiskered Bulbul, all species that are quite commonly found in peninsular India. This came as quite a surprise as these were birds native to areas of land half the globe away. The huge migratory paths of birds notwithstanding, this was a very unusual occurance. A little more digging revealed that in the ’60s. these birds had been introduced in captivity to the Miami area from where they had escaped and established wild, breeding populations and had had varying amounts of success breeding and spreading. They are today recognized as part of the wild birds of Florida. Hmm. Interesting.

**********************************************************************************************************************

As a child I was fortunate in having had a lot of books around me to read, including volumes of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, R.K. Narayan, Ruskin Bond, The Hardy Boys, Satyajit Ray and a host of other authors, famous and obscure. Today, a fairly large personal selection of those books remain, in my bookshelf at home. They’ve turned into a little collection that I’m quite proud of. It makes me smile to think of them, sometimes. Imagine my delight when, the other day, wandering through UF’s campus, I discovered that the University’s Smather’s library has one of the world’s largest collection of children’s books including an edition of Aesop’s fables dating back to the 1700s and a first edition of Alice in Wonderland. They have even had an exhibition dedicated to Alice, and today UF offers a fellowship to librarians specifically oriented towards children’s literature in English. The university has also helped pioneer the study of Children’s literature in an academic setting. I haven’t yet been there but just looking at their website leaves me awestruck. Imagine posessing books from the 1800′s where the illustrations were actually hand painted on to each page. Or pop up books that were cut out with a pair of scissors. It takes a lot to rewind oneself to age 6 and write a book that a child would love. Each of these would truly have been works of art. I must go there soon.

Tobacco Road: Lyrics

charlie — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 11:47:06 +0000

[Charlie's Note: A little mood music. "Tobacco Road" by Lou Rawls, 1963]

‘Cause I was born in a dump
My mama died and my daddy got drunk
He left me here to die or grow
In the middle of Tobacco Road

I grew up in a rusty shack
All I owned was hangin’ on my back
The Lord knows, how I loathe
This place called, Tobacco Road

But it’s a home, yeah
The only life I’ll ever know
And the Lord knows, I loathe
Tobacco Road, yeah

I’m gonna leave and get a job
With the help and the grace from above
Save my money and get rich I know
And bring it back to Tobacco Road

Bring dynamite and a crane
Blow it up and start all over again
And I’ll build a town, I’ll be proud to show
And keep the name, Tobacco Road

‘Cause it’s a home, yeah, yeah
The only life I’ll ever know
And despise you called you filthy but I love it
But I love you because you’re my home

Hey, Tobacco Road, Tobacco Road
Now you’re dirty and you’re filthy
Tobacco Road

I’m gonna get me some dynamite
And I’ll bring me a crane
And then blow it up
I’ll tear down and start out all over again

Tobacco Road, Tobacco Road
And I love you, yeah
Because you’re my home
But you’re dirty and you’re filthy
Tobacco Road

I’m gonna blow you up
I’m gonna tear you down
And I’ll build me a town
That I will be proud to show

But I’ll keep the name
I’m gonna keep the name
I’m gonna keep the name
A Tobacco Road, a Tobacco Road

Tobacco Road, road, road, road
I’m talkin’ ’bout
Tobacco Road, road, oh yeah

Young Men’s Tales

charlie — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 07:48:07 +0000

[ Charlie's note: I loved working on this piece. It's the first serious piece of non fiction I've put up on this space. "Young Men's Tales" is an essay on some famous characters from English novels by Indian authors.

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD the pdf of the essay.

Hope you enjoy the change from all the usual stuff I post! ]

Indian Coffee House: An Outsider’s View

charlie — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 04:06:19 +0000

[Charlie's Note: I did not write this. Well, not entirely anyway.]

‘British Raj’ time like waiters with white uniforms and red kamarpattas and white pagdi. The place has no pretensions of the usual ‘coffee places’. Unlike your usual CCD this one is totally Indian, with it’s blue walls and ceiling fans and wooden tables and benches to sit on.

The people in here I see are over forty, except perhaps the two hippie-ish firangs I see sitting on the booth parallel to me.

There’s a Parsi couple in the corner with their amused non-Parsi friends sitting opposite them. “Oh, no! M.G. Road is in that direction!”. Clearly, the non-Parsis are non-Bangaloreans too. They look amused, strangely, which is stupid. M.G. Road was in fact in ‘that’ direction.

The firang couple; the guy’s blond with matted shoulder length hair, wearing knee length shorts and a kurta-ish shirt, golden print on white, which opens in the front, and a white tee(or a baniyan) inside. The girl, sitting opposite him, looks like another one of those hippies you see in Goa, bright multi-coloured sundress with spaghetti straps and numerous other bands showing on her shoulders.

This place, I’ve heard serves one of the best filter coffees, so I order one and then continue looking around.

Fork and knife uncle.

Open doorway arch that has a wooden board ‘No Admission’ above it.

Lady sitting in the corner, suave black shirt and jeans and a prim haircut, on observation I realized also was wearing a bindi. Ironic.

Open wires held together with yellow insulation tape and customary large switchboard with approximately fifteen switches.

Huge mirror, 5ftx2ft on the wall. Serves no apparent purpose.

In utterly metropolitan Bangalore, this Indian, maybe even slightly British-Indian place is amusing.

Good Coffee.

Cheap food.

Blue

charlie — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 06:19:29 +0000

The cap of his pen was blue. Its nib was stained blue with the ink. One of the files on his desk was blue, as was the colour of the lettering on his calendar. His computer didn’t count in this game. There were one, two, three, four blue books in his shelf. And he bent over to look through the glass top of his table, his eyes level with their surface. No, that was more green than blue. Damn it, it was never blue enough! The blue on the label of the manufacturer on the side of the couch, he declared proudly! Yes, that was a good one.

It was a wretched time, the wait between appointments. He always squirmed around so impatiently as he waited. He had broadly two kinds of patients – one who were rich and just needed reassuring that their fears were baseless and that their symptoms were a result of boredom and a bad lunch and the other, who were rich and needed convincing that their health could not really be bought for any sum of money. Yes, the heart was a cruel bitch of an organ and he had dealt with that bitch every day of his life for the past three decades. His last patient had been a rather cooperative specimen of the first kind and now he had another forty minutes to kill before the next arrived. So out came the colour game.

Appa had taught him that game many years ago. The gum bottle was blue. His shirt was blue. That plastic cover was blue. They usually played with blue, sometimes with yellow, but never with red. The post office was full of red things. The letterbox, the sealing wax, the pencils, the pens, red uniforms, red embroidery on khaki uniforms, red chillies in the lunch box, the red thread dangling around the peon’s neck, red paan spit on the wall….

Appa had first taught him the game many years ago when Amma had gone back to her parents’ house when she was pregnant. Both she and the baby had died at childbirth. But it didn’t matter, that was too long ago to be painful any more.

Krishnan would go to the post office with his father after school and sit there on the rickety table talking to his father and the peon and the guard and the shopkeeper across the street and the shopkeeper next door and the one next door to him. Appa was always in a hurry, always working. In the morning he’d be in a hurry doing the whole bath-temple-coffee-tiffin routine before sending him to school and climbing on that jangling arrangement of metal and riding to the crumbling two room post office with its perennial smell of glue, mouldy paper and candlewax. Oh yes, the logo of the Indian Post was red.

Appa was always doing something there. Nobody could really say what, but he was always doing something and never really had time to stop and talk. But he listened vaguely, little ripples from the constant stream of his son’s chatter lazily slipping into his mind, for want it seemed of an alternate destination.

Sometimes, he rode around the village with his father, handing off people’s mail. Some got blue inland letters (yes, those were blue too), some got yellow postcards. Sometimes someone received a big bundle and Krishnan would scream out to the entire street as they rode up to the recipient’s house. And everyone would gather around to watch, and they would remain there till the parcel had been seen and passed around and commented on by everyone. And Krishnan and his father would spend the next hour or so talking to them all too.

It had been a rather unusual childhood. Appa’s job with the postal services had seen him spending his entire childhood hopping across the little villages and temple towns across southern Tamil Nadu. He never really had and lasting friends, and he wasn’t too keen on family, they all looked at him with a sad sympathy that he really rather didn’t have. And teachers and priests and everyone else came and went with every new hop. Ironic, that a man who spent his entire adult life working for the only means of organized communication in that part of the world had managed to distance himself and his family from all lasting relationships. Every couple of years it was a different village. Some near the sea, some near the hills, all surrounded by paddy fields and all swelteringly hot! Krishnan played cricket with everyone and went to the temple with everyone and talked and laughed to everyone but in the end, he turned around and walked back home.

All these villages were built the same way, temple in the middle, Brahmin families in the streets around it and everyone else in the outer streets, with the paddy fields beyond. He was a Brahmin by birth, yes, but he lived in the little quarter provided by the Government. Usually, it was in a dubious plot just near the entrance of the village, that everyone knew, but nobody associated with. It was neither here nor there. It just existed on the horizons of everyone’s lives, but was never in focus.

And he’d wander in to the temple and through the market and everyone would know him but in a year they’d all be replaced with a different set of faces. Eventually, he left this lifestyle to become a doctor and a very good one and he lived now, in London.

There was a knock on the door and another fat, rich white woman walked. Aah, and her dress was blue.

He was good with his patients, they loved him, and he felt nothing for them.

Spring Sunday Wisdom

charlie — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 05:31:36 +0000

Maybe March isn’t so bad after all. After the initial wave of heat has passed and I’ve had the wisdom to stop roaming around in jeans and switch over to shorts, the weather’s transformed into that lazy warm that makes you want to wake up late on a Sunday morning and play Led Zeppelin II before grabbing an indifferently buttered slice of toast and some juice from the fridge for breakfast.

“Damn it! I want chai “

“Go make some. And for me too.”

“Naah. Too lazy.”

“Chut.”

“You actually expected something different?”

There is no vocalist in the history of music as gorgeously obscene as Robert Plant. Him and Page finding each other was just a miracle. And as with most miracles, we’re all glad it happened.

“Eh fucker go make chai na! “

“Go screw your self.”

“At least tell me where the cheese is.”

“In the fridge, duh!”

And now that April is just around the corner and May just a flip of the calendar after that, we can actually start dreaming of mangoes again.

“Dude, I’ve had ONE mango in the whole of the last year!”

“We get it, you weren’t in the country and have a bank account stuffed with green notes that you aren’t going to spend on us, now shut up!”

We don’t have to go across the street for Mango ice cream every time we have a craving for the fruit.

Let other men feast on other things,

The king of fruits is still the fruit of kings!

Suddenly some of my older posts actually sound a little less ridiculous. And Lamb Of fucking God are visiting! Plus Rajini’s new movie release! What a summer!

God I love that album, Zep II. It’s got so much variety – pop, folk, rock and the beginnings of metal all dripping with the blues.

“Virtue is insufficient temptation”, my notebook informs me Bernard Shaw once said precisely when “Livin’ Lovin’ Maid” starts. Aah, how beautiful.

Have you seen all those Jacaranda trees that are in bloom all over Bangalore? OK they were week ago, but still there’s enough of them now for me to proceed.

They’re big with pale purple or pink flowers and they shed all theirs leaves just before blooming and end up completely covered in flowers. So in bloom they’re like these giant sticks of cotton candy stuck upside down into the soil. And they look awesome!

Walking out of my violin teacher’s house in Jayanagar, there’s this one street that is completely lined with Jacaranda trees – on either side and on the divider in the middle. That is such a sight. For once people have something to grab the eye besides neon signs and half naked mannequins from the hosiery shop.

And once every couple of days the Jacarandas discover they’ve overloaded themselves with flowers and need to shed a few. So the next time there’s so much as the hint of a breeze they just let their flowers rain down covering everything and everyone down below. And the best part is there’s just so many of them! You try not grinning at that!

You’ve seen photos of cars speckled with white in foreign lands after a night’s snowfall, right? Cars parked under Jacaranda trees often land up looking like that this time of the year. Plus they are pink, not just white. So there, we’re better.

It’s not like that Jacaranda has the prettiest flowers in the world or anything like that. They’re actually quite mediocre to look at. But it’s just so shamelessly uninhibited by its lack of being “the best” at something. When it decides to bloom, it just gives it everything it’s got and lands up in pure awesomeness. For eleven and a half months it’s just a tree with leaves and branches, but for two weeks in March it tells everyone to shut the hell up and pay attention. And how it impressively succeeds! The city you thought you knew so well is transformed by a tree gone nuts. You have to tip your hat to it. It may send you a flower or twenty by way of acknowledgement.

Soon, it’ll all be over. Elvis will leave the building. But he’ll be back, it’s comforting to know. It allows you to continue loving it when everything that could have change, has.

So there’s your spring Sunday rambling on about what is and should never be before tripping over a metaphor and bringing it on home to a mound of wisdom, thank you.

Jaded Reveries

charlie — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 18:53:38 +0000

(Charlie’s Note: I’ve hit a block )

Oddly, all he felt for the present was apathy – this vague distance from where he saw it all, and felt nothing. Once there was a tale in every whisper, a story behind every flitting sliver of waste paper. Ah, the beautiful people how he loved them and how he hated them. How they were it all, and yet they were nothing. Those little details that once thrilled him now just piled up like a bunch of dry leaves under a summer tree waiting for each other’s company, yet insensitive to it.

Perhaps March was just that tepid excuse for a month when the year, having run out its newness sighed and sat down on the footpath staring idly at an inconsequential insect passing by, wondering what to do next, wearing a look of exasperation borne out of the frustration of the desperate search for meaning, that for want of direction wore down towards a slow meandering and thence to a tired stumbling and finally a hopeless amble that brought it to a bunch of grapes and its present stupor.

In time, it would pass. But not knowing how, it remained just this time of the year that promised nothing but boredom for the present and blistering heat for the future. It was something like trawling for fish, see. You just let your net down and kept sailing and suddenly you found that you had caught a whole bunch of fish. Just like that. He lived his life and eventually his net would snare a passing dream or an idle fancy that would change it all and the world would go back to being the way it always was.

Until then I’m going to read Dickens and listen to The Beatles. Tata.

On Companionship

charlie — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:01:42 +0000

[Charlie’s Note: I quote Asmi (I think), “When the conversation flows freely and yet the silences are comfortable - that, is true companionship.”]

Let me be the woman, he said and so it was and she was the man and the Book of Pastels fell out of its rack and on to the floor, splashing them with waves of purple and gold as they swirled and swayed, now leading, now being led.

“I want to hear the banjos” , and the Book of Strings, idly picked turned with mirth and rolled with delight before opening to the page of joy and there was a touch of wood and the flourish of strings and the tinkling of laughter and “Wait! I want to show you how the wind felt before I grew up”, and little slivers of heaven showered like confetti , embracing them with the warmth of a late evening zephyr over the hissing sea.

And he wrought with his mettle the arches he so loved and she, just because she could, spread them out and about till there were a million of them leading on to the horizon and they danced amidst all they made and heard and felt, but they couldn’t smell much and dinner time was nigh, so they essayed the Book of Courses and had the servants lay out for them a feast fit for a king and perhaps a queen and when the smell wafted through, there was bliss and they had everything.

And they sat there, tired, admiring all they created – the arches, the music, the breeze, the smells, the sights and sounds embedded in their memory of it all. And all the world was their words, carefully placed and carelessly tossed by whim and by wisdom, a script from the past for a future that is not. And maybe it was a bit much so hush to the breeze and a wave at the strings and it was all quiet.

And the arches went.

And the smell disappeared.

And the food didn’t matter any more.

And they sat in silence.

They had had nothing. They had had everything. Now, they had nothing.