In which she stumbles and falls and generally makes an ass of herself. In the nicest possible way.

Elton John got it all wrong, I tell you. 'Sorry' is nowhere near 'the hardest word'. I put to you that 'thank-you' (hyphenated, two technically, but one yet) is. There are some debts you incur by the fact of living that seem near impossible to settle. The ones I owe my flower-power mother and father, for example. Or the ones I owe Hazel and Melody.

Then there are others which defy explanation by the unbearable lightness of (their) being; by insinuating the ones bestowing these goodnesses into my life in ways even I scarce understand. Shiv, Bini, Tridip, Aditi; I mean you, and the world of your making which I will forever cherish and treasure.

How often does one get to meet the most gargantuan intellect of their age? How much less likely yet is it that when aforesaid intellect personified and ossified in the form of one Shiv Visvanathan (who wears his erudition and learning as lightly as if it were woven of that muslin so fine, it got that poor Mughal princess of years gone into all kinds of trouble) breezes into your life, he introduces you to others of his ilk - the inimitable civilising force known in short-hand as Binita Desai, and the Auditor-General of the universe-at-large, Tridip Suhrud? Of course, Space-Oddity-Nut Sarkar, who doesn't even remember if he saw Janis Joplin ("some woman was on stage alright, but I can't be sure it was her") live completes this, my unholy trini - wait. Quartet.

If Shiv's is the elemental beat, setting this bossa groove a-going, Bini plays Brubeck, conducting and leading with her searing sense of aesthetic [to which we all secede, concede, and defer diligently]. Add to this the stand-up bass playing, backbone-providing walking jazz lines of Dr Suhrud, and we have something of a winner on our hands, my increasingly puzzled readers - stay with me, because this metaphor; laboured as it is, is about to bear fruit! (teeheehee) Oddity Sarkar is the sax-playing, melody providing layer that makes this mix pop, sizzle and crackle. They play bizarre time-signatures even I fain understand, these people do, but when you *get* where they're going? *sigh. It sounds as intricate, beautiful and life-affirming as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc34Uj8wlmE

Can you blame me for being enchantedbedazzledinaweandmorethanalittlebitinlove?

What brought on this slightly illiterate (but very heartfelt) paean to the wonder that is my DA-tribe?

Something that is less bright, light and for those very reasons probably the most important thing I've ever seen them involved with. You see, Shiv, Bini and Tridip, alongside another woman I admire as much as life itself, Teesta Setalvad and her Citizens for Justice and Peace (http://www.cjponline.org/) were the 'brains' behind the Gulberg Society Memorial on the 27th of February. This was to commemorate the massacre which occurred there during the Gujarat riots (and that's putting it very mildly) of 2002.

When I learnt that these people were working with the CJP on this 'Memorial to a Genocide', my first reaction was that I wanted to help; in any way, shape or form that I possibly could. Shiv co-opted me into writing for this issue of Communalism Combat (which saw the most devastatingly poignant of his writings yet, to my mind. These have been beautifully translated into Gujarati by Tridip and Saroop Dhruv). Bini came up with ideas for the other 'installations' at the society, and they were meant to sensitise anyone who showed up - no questions asked about who or why - about all that happened, conditions in euphemistically named rehabilitation-camps to this day, and allow them to engage with Gulberg society; a place which saw loss in senses of the word most of us cannot imagine possible. She came up with the idea of a 'Wailing Wall' along one side of the mosque which stands as quiet witness at the entrance of the society. On it we hung up almost 800 photographs of those dead or missing post-riots. Needless to say, the victims of the Godhra tragedy were equally a part of this space for mourning.

As the victims-survivors-witnesses to these riots started coming in on that day, from all across the riot-affected areas of Gujarat, this wall took on the afterlife of a sacred symbol - testament to lives lost; stories which weren't ordained to narrate themselves through, in the form of lives lived. Clusters of people stood in front of it throughout the day, for hours on end. Someone moved some of the pictures around, so that the members of one family could rest alongside each other at least in this commemoration of absence; someone else prayed in front of the photographs of their relatives. With every passing moment, as the day wore on and one finally sat down and let the enormity of the situation sink in when Shubha Mudgal joined her voice - earthy, organic, as attuned to the loss of those she sang for as any human being could be - to the ones of those asking for cognizance of devastating wrongs done, and justice, before conciliation can become a reality, my heart broke into a million pieces.

I started obsessing over the photograph of a child lost in the Pandherwada massacre. This little guy couldn't have been over three years old, and behind his intense Lennon-inspired dark-glasses, I'm sure he was looking out at (but also beyond) the photographer, with a brazenness that was so endearing, I was shaken to the core.

I was all of 19 when the riots 'happened', and left India a few months after the last of the fires had been put out. I've never really engaged with loss on this scale; I haven't had to. This might also have been because, as I've said in an earlier post, Ahmedabad is bloody conducive to the building around oneself of towers. Of the ivory variety. I didn't know what happened in 2002 any more than what was common knowledge owing to media coverage. It imposed upon my consciousness years later, when 'writing the city' for DNA made me grapple with it in ways I'd dismissed in the past. In allowing me to see, hear, but also touch, feel and smell Gulberg, Teesta, Shiv, Bini and Tridip allowed me - more accurately, forced me - to own up to silence as culpability; to inaction as disaster, and reminded me (as if this ever needed doing) why they fight the good fight every day of their lives.

You, each and every last one of you, are responsible for whoever and whatever I am 'becoming'. I absolve my selves (many. plural. yes. I know what I mean) and future selves from any and all responsibility in this regard.

Shelley says the word love has been too often profaned, so it won't mind my abusing it once more yet.

So love, then. Always.

H.

On Every Street

This post is unique for two reasons: I don't usually write (or read, or twitch, or scratch, or doodle) whilst listening to music. It demands my full attention - if it's music of my own choosing, of course - and any less would be sacrilegious (which, while it oughtn't bother this a-religious [not irreligious; there's a world of difference] bum too much, well, does, because it's music, goddamnit). Today, I'm trying to write as On Every Street (the song, not the album) plays in the background. The second reason is that I'm giving myself only two listenings (10 minutes and 8 seconds) to get this done with. If I don't keep myself amused, who will?

What brought this post on, to get back to the point I never made in the first place, come to think of it (this is like the debate on whether the Rukhmabai case of 1884 was for a 'restitution' of conjugal rights or an 'institution' of them in the first place - hah - who says history doesn't move in mysterious ways?), is this - I think this song has one of the finest build-ups I've ever heard. It ranks way, way up there, alongside Shine On You Crazy Diamond, Take a Pebble, Part 1 of The Wall and possibly Brothers in Arms in terms of the way these numbers draw you in, and when you think you've got them sussed out, gobsmack you into tomorrow with a build-up that actually takes you/them to a plane you wouldn't have imagined possible. The dynamics of Knopfler's playing - and I say this having heard most everything DS has ever done, a lot of his solo stuff, and having seenheard him live - blow me away; in his hands, the guitar becomes more eloquent than, than - Martin Luther King, I tell you! His attack, his tone, the finger-picking style? Of course, the musicians he plays with - bloody brilliant each one -help some; the way they play 'together' is testament to their genius, sure, but also how keenly they feel each rise, swell, drop in the riff at hand, in the movement, in the music of their/his creation.

Ok. I cheated, but only by a minute. I'll end here and post this before I change my mind. More in another piece sometime? Of course, it'd have been smarter to pick the epic Shine On (13 minutes and counting) to exercise (exorcise, even?) this little idea. What can I say? Knopfler hath mee (in keeping with the Keatsian conceit) in thrall.

Jazz is gossip.

Jazz is gossip.

There. As always, I spent it on the title. I’m wondering if I should sully the obvious (insert self-congratulatory slap on the back here) truth of that line by giving it an entire post – surely it would work better as a stand-alone, tightly-condensed little aphoristic gem? (Yes – this is more of that obnoxious self-congratulatory behaviour on display, but cut me some slack – is it a gorgeous formulation or what? I’ve been so pleased with myself ever since I hit upon it, I can’t stop smiling. Widely. Rather stupidly – there. That’s your recompense.)

It came to me when I was driving home one night, listening (as I often do), to that seminal album Time-Out (1959), by the Dave Brubeck Quartet. It features the extraordinary Blue Rondo a la Turk, Kathy’s Waltz, the seminal (and therefore only song most people have heard by these splendid musicians) Take Five, Pick Up Sticks, Three to Get Ready, Strange Meadow Lark and this rather stunning little thing called Everybody’s Jumpin’. It’s this last that got me thinking, and in the fond hope that it might have the same effect on some others, I’m (ever so helpfully) attaching a link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V3aqw0RY384

It started out like this. As ever, I was humming the ‘home riff’ or point of departure (and by virtue of being aforementioned departure, also, importantly, point of re-entry into the song proper) when it dawned on me that I was in a curious space; an interstitial one pregnant with possibility, where it felt (in keeping with this metaphor) that something was being born. In my head, since I can only thinkreadwritedreamsee in text, I called it a phrase. Once established, by virtue of all the musicians consenting that this indeed *is* ‘home’, each one started venturing out by way of soloing; there began the game of Chinese Whispers. It became obvious that what informed the soloing was the acknowledgement – sometimes the merest hint of it sufficed – of this starting point, from where it cast further and further afield; the home phrase took on a cultural afterlife all its own, before, inevitably winding back to the source, but only to elaborately take it into another space.

Consider now, reader dearest, how the informal ‘web’ that underpins culture works. You hear something. In repeating it, you add/subtract/explicate/repudiate/play with it, to make for a ‘better story’ (nudge, nudge, wink, wink), and before you know it, it has become something else. Rumour or ‘hearsay’ is thus born. Circulate it – in a perambulator, if you must, for it is an infant yet – and you’re staring at the beginnings of that most monumental of all things – gossip.

Can classical music be equated thus? My head says no, my gut quite the opposite. Perhaps it is a more codified exit-point, but isn’t any form of improvisation essentially, structurally, a deviation from an established norm? To me, it is gossip yet, but perhaps the kind of thing you’d hear in the corridors of power – the Rajya Sabha, the Assembly. It hasn’t the playfulness, the levity, the vivaciousness of office gossip – the valued information exchanged over the coffee dispenser. The knowing look you give the boss you’ve just heard about, as you slide into place to dash off yet another infernal reportarticlelecture (insert output of labour of choice here). No. For that you want some jazz. Of course you do. Everybody’s jumpin’, after all.

Even Cowgirls Get The Blues*

I’ve heard tell that distance can induce psychosis of a sort.

That you can feel bipolarly giddy with excitement one moment;

Decidedly devastated the next.

This really is a tango for one not two;

like a complex arrangement rendered for solo guitar

The other stands no chance

For how do you 'hear'

when a word is merely seen?

Things do not always 'se repondent'; not always can you see

the collapsing of categories

long known,

long held

to correspond.

And this

in a love which speaks different tongues.

Sweet, languorous ecstasy.

Something meant,

Something heard.

Something pierced

Out of turn.

These are the perils of a love

faceless, nameless, sometimes woebegone.

* This title comes from the work of an author I love much, Tom Robbins. Anything else isn't his fault.

I told you so

I've been telling anyone who will listen that Ahmedabad is not a safe city for women; not by a long shot. Most don't believe me, putting down my 'rants' to paranoia or arguing that other cities are 'worse' - what sort of lame-ass logic is that? Unsafe is unsafe, whichever fucking way you look at it. Am I supposed to feel better because the odds of my being molested are higher somewhere else than here? That these odds exist at all is worrisome enough in my opinion. That's all there is to it as far as I'm concerned.

That there's been something sick - brought on, no doubt, by the repressive attitude "conservative" Gujarati society has towards sex and sexuality - rearing its ugly head in the male gaze that looks, judges and thinks it can possess any female form it finds not corresponding to the 'norm' (their definition/imposition, not mine) has been obvious for some time. I've been followed/chased/harassed variously when out with friends on two-wheelers and in my car. I've been groped (when I was 15, in broad daylight, in the middle of this motherfucking city), pinched and otherwise abused in most ways you can think of, but there's a difference between those days and these, and that difference is in the outrageous blatancy with which the Ahmedabadi/Gujarati male (lowest of the low, fucking cretinous vermin) now feels he can think/look/touch/do what he will with a sense that nears entitlement! He's always been a pervert, this bastard, but at least he looked suitably embarrassed if you caught him out while he was staring at your breasts - not so anymore.

The latest in a long, long line of incidents (which, as you might have guessed) has brought on this post is this: I am a musician. Our band gigs regularly at a lovely place in Gandhinagar - we've been playing there for 11 years - and it's surrounded by a bunch of schools (NID, NIFT, DA-IICT), which means we've always had a lovely audience. Now, a woman musician in this 'ere city is a rarity, so I'm used to having a lot of cameras shoved in my face, week after week, month after month, year after year, even when the other guys are soloing. Most times, I just gesture to the wielder to get the cam out of my face. Which he (90% of the time it's a 'he') grudgingly, but mostly, does. The other night however, I had a drunk motherfucker come and try sticking a camera up my dress! I was sitting on stage, playing, when I noticed this son of a bitch bend real low and try to shoot up my legs. Charming, nein? I swore at him on the mic, and Antoine came and pushed him out of the way, after which the guys in my band swooped in and pushed him clear out of the area, but the nerve of this man amazes me - *this* is that sense of entitlement I'm talking about.

This would have been unthinkable here a few years ago; in a public place, on stage, and I'm *still* not safe? The audience tried to kick the shit out of him, but my band-mates managed to push him out, hand him to security and save his ass from being whooped by all present. I heard someone even grabbed his phone and smashed it to pieces. I'd have loved to've punched his fucking lights out.

Whence this brazenness? Where are these slime-balls coming from and who in God's name gave them to believe they could get away with being such dipshits?

En bref, listen to me when I say that Ahmedabad is getting to be (and has been, for most of my life anyway) a nightmare for women.

This time, it really gives me no pleasure whatsoever to say 'I told you so'.

Isn't it a pity?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drCKvCL93hw

Isn't it a pity? Isn't it a shame?

Two years on, and we're back. Down on our knees. As emasculated, impotent and pointless as ever we were. So 'they' have had a go at Bombay again. There is more 'rage' among the masses this time. Channelised where, you ask rightly? Towards whom? Well, Chidambaram, in this instance it would appear. Of course, how he could have done anything differently or averted this tragedy we don't know. Neither do the masses agitating against him, but such is life.

As Chavan said, we're probably better equipped to "respond to" and therefore limit the extent of the carnage this time round, but we're clearly not in a position to ensure it doesn't transpire at all. Having said that, is anyone? Is any place truly secure? What sort of state infringement and machinery would it take to make that happen, and is such an accost (for it would most decidedly be one) to our person and space (read: additional security at airports, stations, cinema halls and how this will translate into more detailed searches, longer security checks etc.) going to be readily acceptable to us in the name of a nebulous 'greater good' which, while we may fuzzily aspire to it, isn't exactly or immediately experiential or palpable?

There are fewer casualties this time. AND, they didn't attack the Taj, that symbol of all things Bombay (I'll never forget the time this ridiculous woman reporter waxed eloquent about everything the hotel/building stood for in Bombay's scheme of things even as people were still being hacked to pieces inside it. She made me lose much more than just respect for television journalists; she made me despise their very fucking creed). I wonder how long it will be before they start talking about the Opera House. I also wonder whether they'll remember that people dying - even nondescript, everyday ones like you and I -is slightly more worrisome than the damaging of even the most iconic structure.

The Indian Mujahideen this time. The LeT the last. And still we don't, as a nation state, wake up to the factiousness being caused by our treatment of large swathes of our own population? I lost a lot of faith in the justice of our political/state machinery after we caused a civil war-like situation with our inept and completely fascist handling of the so-called Reds; the Maoists. There appears to be no room for the tribal, the other, the minority/ies in our monolithic conception of what comprises 'development'. This is costing us. Dearly.

Do not for a moment read this as an apology for violence - of any which kind - perpetrated either against the state or by it. Recognise the anguish that underlies it, informs and perpetuates it.

Sailing in full light

Have you ever

do you want to;

do you know you can sail in full light?

The moon is a fine thing

as image and metaphor goes,

but have you ever

do you want to;

did you know you could sail in

full light?

Now the water beckons;

no rock or albatross here:

The sea. The white. The siren

and you.

She says their song is a plea for help:

"Only you; only you can save me"

It works every time.

Now do you want to?

Now that you know you can?

Now that you know

you know you can sail

in

full light.

Full

Light?