A Rosy Tale of Winter

This city has started taking place in my heart. With the green monsoon, here comes the winter!

There comes a day when the early rising Punekar will step out of his house, pause in slight surprise, and try to clear his eyes. When the blurriness remains, the he realizes that the light fog is to blame for the reduced visibility and that winter has arrived on padded feet.

Winter arrives quietly in Pune and is greeted with relief by the city. Pune has always lived, figuratively and literally, in the shadow of a metropolis that makes much of its monsoons. But winter is a season Pune can lay claim to as its own. Unlike the disruptive machismo of the Bombay rains, Pune's winter is gentle in both arrival and tenure, mirroring the  happy and laid-back ways of the place. A trip down the sleek Mumbai-Pune expressway through the misty Western Ghats more than amplifies this difference.

In the Pink The phrase that the locals use to describe the first month of the winter says it all. Punekars bask in “gulaabii thandii”, literally the “rosy cold”. During this time, citizens, in their light woolens, can be seen bearing a light rosiness of both cheek and demeanor.

Since Pune's winters are temperate, especially in comparison with the frigid bitterness of many North Indian towns, they can rouse residents to action rather than cause them to cower behind a thick quilt. Once the indolence of the early cold morning is defeated, a walk in the balmy ambiance is the best way to kick off a day. Given that parts of commercially booming Pune are sometimes be-deviled by smog towards the evenings, the mornings remain the best time to soak up the sun-kissed winter at the 'tekri'.

A favorite‘ tekdi’ or hillock. Pune is blessed with an abundance of these easy-to-climb hillocks, which offer vantage views of the city, especially in the late evenings. Many of these tekdis have a temple at the summit, providing the spiritually-minded with a reward for their exertions. For the more material at heart, tekdis also offer flat summits for exploration and the pleasant company of fellow wanderers.

A favorite variation of this is to walk up the nearest

Winter is also Avian Season for bird watchers. Many lakes in and around Pune receive several varieties of migratory birds. Pune has inspired many as amateur ornithologists.

Since winters in Pune rarely descend into single digit temperatures, the city is never hobbled by the weather. As January ends and the sun becomes less oblique, winter fades away just as gently as it arrived. Each year, the hard-to-impress Pune old-timer will insist that the city was not what it used to be. But come next November, this sentiment will be assuaged by the winters of Pune's content.

Rain in Winter

There were intrepid clouds, heavy nimbus, shades of violet, purple, greys and a peculiar orange circumscribing the skies. Fields of yonder, accustomed to the Sunshine, its dazzle and warmth... Wanted the soothe of the rain drops, the first mirth of the fertility awaiting the green grass and flowers of all colours... The scent of the earth and the song of the air on beats of thunder. And so it rained. It rained, clouds of the South Sky did pour. Drenched Soul.. Soaring spirits. Love, may be in Pune.

....before there was the first inflorescence, colours vanished away from the flower palettes. May be it rained too heavy. May be it din’t rain as much.

Charm, as it is, what goes around comes around...some molten shades, evaporated and amalgamated in the clouds that had decided to pour. They came with the show of glamour, lightening along to keep the Earth mesmerized  And like a magician, the clouds did spellbound the heart and soul, which were more than ever young this season. My dear city, happy with some rains somewhere, hopeful of the clouds that would come and pour unconditionally.

(Unconditional, has a clause yet of having no condition. Expectations seeps in, in form of being formless.)

And we, yearning and learning, passively. Praying some rains, though dismaying the clouds. Nature has its own plan, destiny its own. Dried up earth was soon to be sold.

And then it was to happen. Divinity into action. This time of the celesta, the darkest clouds, thick with hues of gravity, each shade conveying its own virtue. The smoked browns talked of the experiences carried along while floating till this patch of Land, blues talking of the depth the cloud had, the intensity it had, the rains it can cast. Grays telling the stories of the unexpected , the Blacks talking aloud of the ability to engulf, some White here and there telling of the silence that wisdom attains and that glistening violet, the unending enigma! This was it. The rains were to come... it had to pour. The bosom of the Earth had to be damp. It had to be damp to be off the enrapture of being barren . Be off the mirage of clouds. For this time it was real. It was to stay. Forever.

And it rained. There was a melody in the heart of the Earth, there was a poem in the rain drops, there was harmony in nature. A Love Song was born. Perpetual One. 

Dream Job – Made in China

I had the perfect job. The one I always wanted—in an exciting industry, for a big name company, with a title that says I get to do what I love all day long. Except for that—well, I hate it.

It's painful to admit it. My job went from being the greatest job ever to being a horrible job. It took a few months so I didn't completely realize it was happening. And speaking from experience, the grieving and recovery process is quite long.

I know, at some point in your career – maybe at multiple points – you’re probably going to have a bad boss but when that person turns into a real nightmare, it’s explainable. And as it turns out, a terrible boss doesn't just impact the way you work in the office. It affects your entire life.

...And if your peers are women! Forget the sisterhood. Forget smashing a hole through the glass ceiling and throwing a rope ladder down to her younger female colleagues. The Queen Bee is alive and well and — watch out — possibly sitting at the desk next to you.

A Queen Bee is someone who has worked her way up to the top in a male-dominated organisation! Rest I leave it up to you to decide and in my case I had two of them.

I have been witness to people exploiting their positions for their personal gains. These ‘higher authority’s feedback were biased and echoed no work ethic. When the time came for my evaluations, my bosses gave me a 15 min. lecture about how to ‘act’ like the Queen Bees. I guess, such is the way to climb up the ladder in A-grade media houses in India. Shorter your pants, bigger your salary!

"In this economy," we're told, "you should be thankful you have a job at all." Well, yes... But also; no.

Being able to support yourself is important, of course, but anyone who is aware of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs will tell you that once your basic needs are covered, you'll automatically yearn for more. You may have a job, a home, a husband and children, and still wonder, 'Is that all there is?'

If you're young and ambitious, it's not enough to have a job - you have to have the job. There is so much emphasis on a coveted career: a job that doesn't just sound cool, but which gives other people a case of the green-eyed monster. When I was a kid, everyone wanted to be a doctor or a lawyer. These days, we want to be do-it-yourself millionaires, zippy entrepreneurs or wacky internet personalities.

For the people stuck in this trap, the appearance of the job matters more than the reality. But why slave away to impress people you don't even like?

But , imagine you’re “living the dream,” as you told your proud parents and envious friends upon receiving the offer letter. When you walk through those fancy doors to your fairy-tale

job every day with Katy Perry’s “Firework” blasting in your head, all you can think is: “The perks! The title! The bragging rights!” Who cares that you’re working 90 hours a week and your boss is a borderline psychopath? You’ve “made it,” and there’s no looking back!

With time I figured out, I was spending most of my effort each day trying to take on the persona I needed for the position I wanted—a persona that just didn’t come naturally to me. It was exhausting, and no matter how hard I tried to force it to be a fit, it just wasn’t.

My admission came when I got off of work exhausted and bullied by my bosses, yet again, raced to the nearest pub to meet my girlfriends, and burst into tears when they asked how my day was. (Of course, while sobbing, I swore up and down, “I’m really happy though, guys!” until they held a compact mirror in my face and asked, “Oh, really? Is that what happiness looks like?” (Touché.)

I struggled to get past the feeling that I was giving up the perfect opportunity—the opportunity I’d been wanting for so long, one that “most people would kill for.” And one day, I decided to throw my resignation letter up on my boss’s face who’s nothing but a faff. And I did just that.

It took a while for me to recover from such a trauma. My fiancé who’s my husband now, were very supportive. At times, it’s very important to have a partner who understands your needs even before you say. Yes, here comes the best part of this job – I got married. And like a knight in armour (pun intended) R flew me in his (well...Indigo’s) jet and I went from a world of meetings and suits where people listened to my opinion to being a nobody writing a book in a cafe.

Caught Between Eternity and History

       

In an iron boat

Loaded with stones,

A bundle of poison on his head,

He wants to cross over.

- Kabir

Pic: Random

We are losing time. Not the usual, in the Sense of growth and development. But our own racial sense of time in which few weeks from now, no new millennium commences nor the 21st century begins. The West has succeeded in making an entirely Gregorian calendar-event the 20th century, a global century.  This has happened for the first time in human history. We still celebrate our religious ceremonies, social events such as marriages etc. according to our own calendars; but in our public life, we have adopted the western time, its calendar and the other accompanying notion. The 19th century was not globally acknowledged as the 19th century of mankind but the 20th century, in spite of the fact that new man who was expected to emerge out of the revolution failed to and also of the fact that the Western colonialism disappeared in this century itself. But the Western time, its ideological hold on us has taken over. We are about to lose our time.

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The popular notion (in fact a purely orientalist construct) that the Golden Age of India, when it contributed to the world, ideas and knowledge, technologies and wisdom, insights and visions, ended by about 10th  century. We are, since then, living in the dark medieval ages, a kind of posthumous existence, as it were. This, although all the modern Indian Languages except the classical Sanskrit and Tamil emerged and grew in this millennium; great and masterly literature was produced in most of them; Indian classical music and dances as we know them today emerged and grew during this period; interaction with Islam and its culture brought about among other things a new language, new architecture and new schools of painting; hundreds of styles, forms and streams of popular craft, theatre, poetry etc. flourished and new concepts and practice of statehood, kinship, warfare etc. came about Also, during this period Shastras continued to be created in Sanskrit relating to poetics, medicine, sexology, architecture, music etc. In the 19th century India had more books written and translated into Persian than in Persia itself. The current cultural and intellectual amnesia prevents us from realizing that the intellectual traditions as well as the creative and innovative spirit remained alive and vibrant throughout the millennium. It can be, and ought to be, seen as a  new flowering of  the Sanskrit civilization. Sanskrit itself, as it were, flowed into many streams Hindi, Kanada, Assamese, Punjabi, Malayalam etc.; Sanskrit no longer as a classical purity, but as so many ‘bhashas’.

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In the West-observed amnesia we have missed to register and appreciate the true importance of four great modern in the last millennium i.e. Amir Khusro, Kavir, Tulsidas and Galib, Amir Khusro, was a warrior, poet, musician, innovator who brought to bear upon the literary sensibility a new sense of humour, a sense of the surreal, an outsider reaching into the inside combining Persian with Khari Boli. Kabir, rooted as he was firmly in his faith, questioned the current religions, practices and rituals of both Hindus and Muslims; family ties; affiliations etc.; problematized the access to God and asserted that the whole world was ablaze “each in his own fire”. Tulsidas, a scholar-poet, created a new epic in a dialect reinventing the Ram legend and radicalizing the Bhakti cult by envisaging an almost counter-state, the Ram-Rajya. Galib brought a most questioning spirit to the Indian poetic tradition, looking askance at being and putting the modern individual, lonesome and demythologized, without certainties of faith, religion and history at the centre-stage. It is true we became modern largely due to our encounter with the West. But it was not inevitable. The foursome, mentioned above, had already radicalized our situation in the world and brought us to confront ourselves boldly and created entirely new forms to contain our anguish, predicament and anxieties. The coded, ‘upside down’ ulatbansis of Kabir (translated in his century alone by three very different masters namely Rabindra Nath Tagore, Ezra Pound and Robert Bly); the epical mode of “Ramcharitmanas’ of Tulsidas domesticating in a popular dialect the great Sanskrit legend and investing it with new meanings in the bargain and the interrogative strain of the ghazal of Ghalib are all path-breaking departures not merely in the Indian literary history but in all history.  If the modern could be defined as a moment precariously poised between eternity and history, here in India it was history intervening in terms of eternity rather than history superceding the eternal as seems to have happened in the West and the modernist movements it has influenced the world over.

India is a civilization. There are hundreds of culture in the world but very few civilizations and India is one of them. It has survived as a continuum whereas the Greek, the Roman, the Mayan, the Egyptian have all but disappeared.  It has survived largely through its plurality.  We are one because we are so many.  So, many of the age-old traditions of India have survived because they have been internalizing changes all the time.  They change and through change remain the same.  Here, in India the dichotomy of tradition and change, tradition and modern ’in practice hardly obtains. Tradition is essentially a tradition of change.  Indian classical music and dance are interesting examples of this. Over the 3-4 hundred years they have undergone many crucial changes and yet have remained true to their origins and spirit.  The classical in India is by the same token contemporary.

In the millennium gone by many forms of orality moved over to written forms.  Form Vedic chants to the ‘banis’ of the numerous Saint-poets. This transfer has deeply influenced the participative nature of many of these forms. Poetry, for inc, having moved to the written and later the printed page seems to have receded from, that other indestructible page of human mind, memory, It ceased to be utterance; of late, sadly in many ways, it has become almost a noise.  On the one hand, the social accessibility of literature has increased but, on the other, its social place has receded.

Pic: Random

Shrikant Verma in a memorable distinction between liberation and freedom had proposed that liberation was an individual goal to be attained and was accorded a central place in the scheme of thing in India. The west brought us the more social concept of freedom to be achieved through social action and effort. Like between eternity and history, we seen to be caught between liberation and freedom.  It would appear that towards the end of this century, liberation both as a concept and practice is receding and freedom is taking over. The much-talked human rights refer not to liberation but to freedom.  This shift is deeply influencing our beliefs and value-perceptions.

During the past Indians excelled in what they did to voice, stone and mind. The great temples surviving for centuries in timeless splendour; the utter abstraction attained in classical music and the metaphysical complexities, the linguistics and the grammar are all mind-boggling achievements for those times. It would appear that, engaged as it is in the modernist project, India seems to be losing its hold on voice, on complexities, indeed on languages. Din and noise, coarseness, giant simplifications, impatience for subtleties of living and expression, distrust in mother tongues are all writ large on the face of contemporary India.

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But fortunately, the visible India is not all India.  There is a creatively vibrant India, and intellectually alive India, a metaphysically anxious India, and an India continuing to be a civilizational enterprise. The traditional resources of creativity and imagination, of reflection and articulation have not completely dried up and are appearing in new transmutations.  In fact, there are so many India’s –often in conflict and sometimes in dialogue with each other.  The eternal India at war with the historical India; the political India struggling to overcome the cultural India; the intellectual India uprooted from the popular India; the secular India trying to come to terms with the spiritual India. In short, many ideas of India grasping and coping with many realities of India. It is not possible to talk of India in singular; it is plural even as an entity.  It is not coincidental that besides being the largest democracy of the world, it is the most multi-religious and multi-lingual country of the world. We are like the whole of Europe but all within the borders of a single country.

We are neither at the end nor at any brink. We are a tale not yet fully told. We are a human saga still incomplete.  We are a caravan forever on the move.  We have partly moved into the post-modern and partly continue to inhabit the classical. We have taken a new face. We are launched upon a new journey. And yet our own wisdom tells us at any time that it is more important to keep on moving them reaching the goal. We are, no doubt, on the move. We exist in the dimension of eternity and yet we operate in history. We have so far negotiated this rather well.

It is ‘Yogvashishtha’ which centuries ago said: “The world is like the impression left by telling of a story”, India is a story not yet fully told. We are all minor story-tellers, dressed in our unearned immodesty, picking up fragments of an epic story, which goes not and shall never finish. Not is the next millennium either.