So Much for Oranges and Lost Keys!

I was pathetic at math when I was a kid. “If an orange costs Rs. 4, then how much would a dozen cost?” The answer was very apparent to most of my classmates then, but all I could see behind such

math problems was dense fog. Many a time my father would sit beside me patiently attempting to explain how to unravel such complicated-looking math. He would rarely lose his temper as tried to make me comprehend the logic. He would suffer my blockheaded-ness with ease. Of course as time went on, I did get better at math due to in no small part, the efforts of my father.

Two decades later, the tables have turned. My father has got older and cannot easily trace his way around the modern gadgets which we take for granted; like the computer, the mobile or the digital camera. He forgets small things too, like where he kept the car keys or whom he handed over an important letter to. Inevitably when some item seems misplaced or he encounters some complicated-looking problem with his laptop, he turns to me for assistance. I try to take him backwards through his routine to help him locate the misplaced thing, or sit beside him when he cannot find the download button to a song he likes. I try to show or simply talk or sometimes even demonstrate to him but I am ashamed to admit that I show none of the patience which he so often showed me when I needed his help with my childhood problems. I explain an issue once, dumb it down for the second explanation and start losing my temper, if I have to repeat it the third time for him. In fact, I think that I must be one of the difficult people that I know, when it comes to make someone understand the issue behind a problem, and help resolve it.

As I was sharing this with a close friend, I realised again how utterly ungratefully I must be conducting myself. And that too with the same person who would explain child stuff like how when a single orange costs 4 bucks, a dozen would cost 48. I had wrapped my head around oranges and math, but when it comes to displaying tolerance for my father whom I love immensely, I am a dunce. So I tell myself, “When you misplace the key, or when the internet page does not give you the download link, Dad, I will help you with it – Always.”

Thus Gurudev speaks…..

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” – Rabindranath Tagore

I did not hear this statement in an intellectual discourse; neither friend nor teacher directed these words to my attention, nor did any priest. In fact, I heard it first when the auto-rickshaw driver taking me from Malviya Nagar to GK II looked at me in his tiny rear-view mirror and recited the lines word-by-word in English amid all the cacophony of a weekday morning Ring-road traffic snarl. I just listened to him with awe.

The context had been that morning’s weather, which was particularly pleasant after the harsh heat of the previous few days. I remarked casually what a godsend the weather was since the heat is actually worse for people who have to work out throughout the sun like the labourers and yes, the taxi and auto drivers. My driver looked at me in the mirror and smiled saying how work, when perceived in that exalted attitude ceases to be merely a physical/ mental activity which is capable of causing discomfort or stress. He explained his personal views that work done in the service of others stripped of avarice and ritualism, is actually an honest offering to God and therefore, escapes all the accompanying encumbrances which work sometimes amounts to. It was then that he spoke of how Tagore had so clearly synthesised the essence of work, which is service.

The auto driver had graduated in Arts from a university in UP and came down to Delhi looking for work, and has now been driving his auto for nearly 21 years. All his children are graduates (a son is even pursuing his PhD degree) and he confessed with an easy humility that having not amassed any monies, his only wealth is the upbringing he has been able to provide his children, and furnishing them the foundation upon which they can aspire for greatness. In the presence of such plain-speak and humility, I felt humbled too. As I got down, I thanked him for his inspiring thoughts, and silently thanked Tagore too for the clear truths which he has left behind for all of us. 

About a Nut……..and a Leaf

The first image which my mind conjures up when I think about tamul-pan is that of an old granny whom I met many years back during a brief stopover at a village. We Assamese stand by a long tradition of tamul-pan which is a concoction of betel leaves, raw areca nut and some lime smeared on the leaf – a tradition which is pretty much inescapable if you are in Assam. We chew it as a mild intoxicant, offer it to bhokots (monks) in prayer meetings, offer it to the Gods in our marriages, offer it to the departed soul for his appeasement, even our wedding invitation cards are adorned with that familiar image of tamul-pan arranged on a bota (a sort of brass chalice), and not offering it to the husori (Bihu balladeer and dancing groups) players when they come visiting every household in Bihu time, would be tantamount to a sacrilege.

To come back to my story, the granny I met must have been in her 80s, if not in her 90s, and we exchanged greetings. She grabbed a seat beside our family, and talked about this and that, mostly about how old customs are dying out even in the villages. She was very bent over due to her age, her hair was all silver and she had that sweet toothless smile with those twinkling eyes which most grannies seem to have. She had lost all her teeth, and her daily diet consisted of only milk and boiled rice mashed to sheer liquid consistency. Anyway as we were talking, she loudly exhorted her daughter-in-law to offer us tamul-pan (you see, in rural Assam you absolutely have to offer guests tamul-pan). The daughter-in-law placed a bota with tamul-pan in front of us, and a wooden mortar and pestle in front of granny. We watched with fascination as granny proceeded with a single-minded devotion to place first the leaf, and then the nut and lime together in the mortar-bowl, and mashed it all together with her pestle. When she put that powdered brown-green mix in her toothless mouth, her face lit up like a kid who has just got the candy which she was always wishing for. Afterwards she told us how chewing tamul-pan was one of the few pleasures she still enjoyed in that ripe old age. That wonderful image of the old granny with the beatific smile on her lips and eyes has stayed with me.

So when I was visiting Meghalaya just last month and as I saw Khasi people, mostly ladies chewing their kwai (the Khasi equivalent of tamul-pan), that long-loved image came back to me. I saw Khasi ladies in their traditional jainsem dress (with built-in pockets for holding knick-knacks and of, course for holding the beloved kwai), some of them carrying produce to the local markets in their khoh (traditional Khasi bamboo baskets), some with their babies strapped on their backs, others sitting by their shops and tea-stalls and chatting, but all of them with their customary red lips (locals call it the ‘Khasi lipstick’ and it comes from a combination of chewing the lime and nut in kwai). This form of Khasi beauty has been immortalized in a song by balladeer Bhupen Hazarika in his song ‘Lien Makao’ where he sings about a lovely Khasi maiden whose jainsem has been “woven by lightning” and with “alluring red lips”. The Khasi menfolk are mostly seen with their ubiquitous pipes which seems like a natural extension of their face (to be fair though, I saw far lesser men with pipes in Meghalaya the last few times).

Just like us Assamese, the Khasis too have placed their kwai on a pedestal which is accorded to a beloved family member. Khasi people in markets, in shops and on their home porches congregate over kwai, end their meals with kwai and when a person dies, the formal reference is that the departed soul has gone to heaven to enjoy kwai with God. Every other person you meet is most likely to be chewing kwai which also helps to keep warm, particularly in the winters when a small piece of fresh ginger comes gratis with the kwai. The last few times I have visited Meghalaya, I have also made it something of a custom, to imbibe the local kwai but there is one great difference. You see, unlike the Khasis, every time I chew kwai, my face and ears turn beetroot-red. My mom tells me it is because the Khasis traditionally put more lime in their kwai, and also due to the fact that their areca nut is fermented in water, unlike ours (fermented nut is supposed to impart a better taste but I wouldn’t know).

Youngsters now are veering away from the traditional tamul-pan or kwai and moving on to pan masala mixes available in sachets and therefore, more convenient. I cannot say that either is really a good habit. Chewing any form of betel nut concoction is unhealthy for the teeth and also carcinogenic; in fact, instances of mouth cancer in the country are highest in the North-east.

Anyway, whenever I think of old granny and the red-lipped Khasi ladies, I cannot help but smile when I see this connect in our region.

Says the confetti girl, “Have some candy!”

It is just chance that this is July - the birth month for Simi, the “confetti girl” - and it was on the 1^st day of this month that I happened to see the animated film ‘Wreck It Ralph’. Just a few minutes into Wreck It Ralph, I was drawn into the familiar tale of how characters even as those as far-removed from us as the pixilated people from video game are moved by the all-too human emotions of an alienated sense of duty, rejection, isolation, and the cycle of impulsive, ill-advised actions which sometimes precipitate when it is the very nature of the duty which causes that seclusion.

As plots go, this film does not break new ground. We have after all, seen how outcast and misunderstood characters like the hunchback Igor in Igor (2008), the villainous Megamind in the eponymous Megamind (2010) and not to forget, that lovable green monster Shrek, all strive to escape from the caricatured roles which someone else has scripted for them, in order to gain just that little bit of love, acceptance and friendship which has always been denied. Yet it is not the plot itself which delighted me, but the imaginatively-written characters which populate the arcade-style video games, the humour, and the poignancy and honesty in feelings which often laced such humour. This film follows Ralph – a ham-fisted bulldozer of a man in a game called ‘Fix It Felix’ who is forever fated to rain down blows on an apartment building (Niceland) and terrorise its residents, an unhappy state which the handyman Felix soon remedies with the help of his magical golden hammer. Every successful game of ‘Fix It Felix’ concludes with the same fixture – Felix gets feted and awarded with a medal for a job well done while the residents unceremoniously throw Ralph down from the terrace to a muddy puddle on the ground below. To add insult to injury, Ralph is left to dwell in the neighbouring dump from where he sees the colourful and happy lives of the Niceland’s residents. It is this sad state of things that Ralph seeks to turn around.

Ralph quickly comes to the conclusion (erroneous!) that what he lacks is a gold medal just like Felix, which would propel him into the high league. And so starts his journey to a game ‘Hero’s Duty’ which awards a gold medal to its victorious warriors, and onto an ill-managed starship crash into a racing game called ‘Sugar Rush’ with a candy landscape and an absolutely saccharine little girl, Vanellope (voiced so endearingly by Sarah Silverman). It is the chemistry between the mischievous little Vanellope and the grumpy Ralph which is the highlight. In an obvious parallel with Ralph’s own state, Vanellope who is characterised as a game glitch is the resident outcast in ‘Sugar Rush’, mocked and left friendless by her own kind. In a predictable journey fighting vile cybugs and racing impossibly candy-coloured cars through an impossibly candy-themed racecourse and discovering the inherent spirit of friendship between them and a new sense of self-worth, we are treated to some insightful ideas.

It is these insights which bring me now to the life of our beloved friend, Simi. In a world where so many of us seem ill at ease with who we seem to be inside, and the struggles which we put up to re-define ourselves in a bid to win acceptance and love, Simi was the exception. Just like Sarah’s plummy-voiced Vanellope, Simi too conveyed that sweet naughtiness and that bold spirit to boot, of a girl who has her sights set high borne up by a sure sense of identity.

Whether it is Fix It Felix or Wreck It Ralph, I realise that just as we are defined by the jobs we do, we are also marked in a far deeper sense by the values we live by and the love and friendship we are able to share. Just like a zombie character in the game says, “Labels do not make you happy. Good, bad... you must love you.”

Here is wishing you a very happy coming birthday, Simi!

Our Hills of Cambria

I had originally intended this piece to be a memorial for all those Englishmen and Englishwomen – all part of the British Raj – who lived and then died here; some of their remnants surviving in the form of plaques and tombstones adorning their graves scattered all over our land.

The trigger for such a piece happens to be a cemetery I recently visited; a quaint cemetery of a quaint church in Meghalaya. It has been the custom for me when I travel to new places (I realise this now with my latest visit), to end up visiting the old British-era churches and their grounds which often double up as the final resting places for erstwhile British subjects. When I visited Nainital so many years back, I went to St. John’s Church in the upper reaches of the hill-station, and explored the cemetery lying just beside it – interring the remains of so many English folk; men who had gloriously succumbed in battle, dutiful wives who had followed their husbands to this land, and even infants who had been cruelly snuffed out by the deadly epidemics of that age. So many headstones were crumbling and the letters on some were almost rubbed out by the ravages of the wind and the rain, but my friends and I had a strangely wonder-filled time reading out the messages describing the lives of all those people from so long ago. I continue to experience that same feeling of wonderment and an unexplainable kinship whenever I visit old churches and cemeteries, like the times spent at St Paul’s Cathedral, Kolkata, Hudson Memorial Church, Bangalore and the war cemeteries in Digboi and Guwahati.

So it was that as I looked upon a crumbling stone-brick column serving as a headstone, whose sides now housed a loud brood of sparrows, I felt that same wave of something familiar sweeping over me. I was standing on top of a low wind-swept hillock in the cemetery of the First Presbyterian Church at Nongsawlia, Lower Cherrapunjee, Meghalaya and looking down over the church in the background. The First Presbyterian Church at Nongsawlia was established in 1848 by Welsh missionaries who had undergone great hardships to travel all the way from Wales to the Khasi Hills, to spread the words of the Gospel among the local populace, also educating, teaching and guiding them in the process. A Primary School set up in 1843 by the first Welsh missionary Thomas Jones for educating the Khasi children still stands today, as does a High School established by the missionaries. As you move from Cherrapunjee town to the outlying areas of Lower Cherrapunjee, the tall bell tower with a simple cross on top is the first indication of a church you see as you round a bend. Just beside the tower, stands the unassuming First Presbyterian Church of Nongsawlia, with its grey stone walls sourced most likely from the local stone quarries (the lower portion of walls painted with simple white lime), with its Gothic-arched windows and sloping roofs of red tin.

On the other side of the road, a gate with a curved sign proclaiming ‘Presbyterian Church Nongsawlia Cemetry 1845’ leads the way to the cemetery scattered over I think, 3 small hillocks with the farthest right on the edge of a plateau and offering panoramic views of the gorges beyond. The first 2 hillocks are studded with graves adorned with headstones of departed Welsh- and Englishfolk. Many of these headstones are now half-sunken, a few further embellished with protective rings of iron grill. Some of these headstones are more like ‘head-towers’, fashioned out of stone bricks and into vertical columns much like the stone monoliths which Khasi people used to erect as memorials for their forefathers, and which dot the hilly landscape all over. The last hillock contains more recent graves of Khasi dead – some modern graves now decorated with ceramic tiles of floral patterns and covered with colourful artificial flower bouquets left behind by the grieving.

Beyond the stones and the buildings lie the stories of people who strived for something singular and whose efforts are now forever a part of the Cherrapunjee and perhaps, Khasi way of life. The Welsh missionaries, who first came to these hills bearing the words of the Lord, were supported by the honest folk of Wales impoverished themselves, who were moved sufficiently to improve the lot of peoples whom they had not even heard of or met. Still suffering under the constraints of the Napoleonic wars which had severely affected them, folks of distant Welsh towns like Anglesey and Denbigh set aside a portion of their produce or livestock as charity for the Bible Society which spearheaded the missionary drive. Possessing neither riches nor much education the Welsh people contributed with extraordinary fervor and resolve, to send forth these missionaries

The first Welsh missionaries landed at Cherrapunjee on 22nd June, 1841 and proceeded to reform many aspects of the Khasi way of life by imparting practical skills in agriculture, distilling, mining, education and religion. They also introduced the first Khasi script using Roman alphabets and enriched the lives of the local population in ways, which were far-reaching. Clothes, embroidery patterns, reading and writing, medicine, designs in crockery, using coal in limestone kilns – the Welsh missionaries worked in ways of spreading the Gospel that “joyful sound shall have reached the uttermost parts”. Subsequently, the missionaries moved to other parts of Meghalaya like Shillong, shaping positively the lives of Khasi and Jaintia people.

It is indeed heart-warming and inspiring to reflect on the stories of these people behind the crumbling headstones and weathered plaques. A little bit of the hills of Cambria will forever live on in our hills of the Khasi and Jaintia people.

CineM Review: The Secret Garden (1993)

"How does your garden grow?"

Watching ‘The Secret Garden’ made me realise a few things about children. Firstly, that their world though appearing carefree, is just as serious as ours, inhabited as it is also by the more‘adult-like’ emotions of rejection, coercion, belief and finally redemption. Secondly, we as children make the best friendships and though they may not necessarily last a lifetime, that innocence and feeling of something special may last a whole lifetime. And these childhood friendships are not as hard to establish either – sometimes even a shared secret or joy in playing a mutual game suffices to create that wonderful bond. Lastly, children possess a single-minded ability to make up their own ideas and stick to them with a great finality. ‘The Secret Garden’ explores this complex world of children with an understanding and a delicacy which is startling.

This film directed by Agnieszka Holland who has earlier made the children-themed ‘Europa Europa’ and ‘Olivier Olivier’, has adapted the screenplay from Frances Hodgson Burnett's 1911 novel of the same title. The author who had herself led a chequered life, had written a host of romantic and children books. Though the ‘The Secret Garden’ was relatively unheralded during the author’s lifetime, it has subsequently emerged as one the classic English books ever written for children, and the film by staying true to the book, does ample justice to the ideals prescribed therein.

As stories meant for children go, ‘The Secret Garden’ too throws its characters onto a path of vicissitudes, discovery and triumph. Orphaned in India, young Mary Lennox (played to perfection by Kate Maberly) comes to live with her uncle in his rambling estate, Misselthwaite Manor. This estate is also home to a vague sense of disquiet and a human entourage comprising of a cherub of a housemaid, Martha (acted endearingly by Laura Crossley), her Huckleberry-esque brother named Dickon (Andrew Knott), and a strict and forbidding housekeeper Mrs. Medlock (Maggie Smith). Set in the moors of Yorkshire, the estate also houses a secret garden which belonged to Mary’s aunt (her mother’s twin sister), whose death has plunged her uncle and everything in Misselthwaite Manor into a pall of relentless gloom. Mary’s grey and massive room in the grey and massive manor is swathed with intricate and heavy-looking tapestries – the whole look seemingly consistent with a house that can only be home to dour-looking adults, and no children.

Mary manages to splash her own burst of individual energy when she makes a series of strange discoveries, starting with a secret passageway in the manor leading to her dead aunt’s secluded room, a tentative friendship with a trilling robin who leads her into her aunt’s garden, now locked away and running wild and finally, her cousin Colin (Heydon Prowse) who is proclaimed too frail and lives like a condemned person, secreted in some gloomy room with barricaded windows inside that massive house. With these discoveries in that seemingly distant house, Mary proceeds to blaze a child-like path of joyful effort, honest intentions, clear-speak and simple love which goes around in a circle, enveloping the entire household in a new bond of life.

Kate Maberly who had earlier acted in a series of BBC productions brings in a petulant but lovable streak into the character; observe her diminutive jaw stuck out in moments of impetuous anger, the bitterness in her words when she spits them in the face of un-understanding adult supervision, and the smile in her eyes when she gets her way. Mary when she starts out is not very dissimilar to the cantankerous, almost infuriatingly stubborn Colin who is wedded to the belief that he is facing imminent death. As the smart and articulate Mary first aided by the simple country boy skills of Dickon sets out to bring the long-neglected garden alive, and then accompanied by the till-now reclusive cousin continues her incursions into the joyousness and freshness of a new spring now shining upon Misselthwaithe, we witness a transformation. And this transformation is all around – from the bare, weed-overgrown garden now bristling with a colourful bloom of flowers, to the new-found health and vigour in Colin, and the blossoming of the goodness that lies inside Mary’s heart.

This film succeeds at numerous levels; the first obvious mark for me was the superlative acting by all the characters, in particular the young ensemble of Mary, Martha, Dickon and Colin, and finally Mrs. Medlock. Exchanges between children are always fascinating, underlined as they are by their simple joys, tantrums and fears. There is in particular one exchange between the determined Mary and clamorous Colin, when she confronts her cousin with her unfailing belief in his good health borne out of the simple common sense which children do possess. Colin protests and creates a scene, twitching his lips at Mary’s stern rebukes and at last, capitulates. There is another moment in the film when the 3 children gather around a bonfire and circle it in a sort of trance-like surrender, mumbling inanities but calling out for a miracle with a simple but deep fervor which compels even an attending adult to participate in the unlikely voodoo dance. There is also another delightful moment on a swing when Mary and Dickon exchange a glance (is it the first awakening of something greater than just friendship??) of something significant but as yet, indecipherable.

The film also succeeds in capturing other moments of beauty (great cinematography by Roger Deakins). Since I love flowers and gardens, the time-lapse photography of blooming flowers rising up from the ground under the love and care of Mary & Co. was particularly mesmerising. In a film with so many deft touches, the allegory of the secret garden barred and neglected and then, brought back to life by the tender hands of the young children stands tall and unshakeable. In a sense, our lives are also disconcerting similar.

This is a film about the magic which is nothing but irresolute belief in positiveness, and about children. Just like a dear friend of mine who recently got a wonderful opportunity to interact with kids and bring together a great skit by harnessing the resourcefulness and the innate grace of young children, I too have immense belief in the powers that lie hidden inside their immense throbbing hearts.

CineM’s Verdict:

RIP The Man Who Loved Movies

What Roger Ebert (June 18, 1942 - April 4, 2013) has to say goes a long way beyond films and the people who make them. His thoughts possess a much greater reverberance when applied to the larger theatre of the comic-drama that is Life. One unwavering yardstick for me (for the last 3 years atleast) when I set out to see a film is to check what Roger Ebert has to say about it. This does not mean that my own thoughts have been in exact consonance with whatever he said. It is safe for me to say however without the least reserve, that he is able to delve deeper and unearth greater meaning from films that I had thought possible, accustomed as I was, to look at the medium of movies as basically a carrier of entertainment.

Beyond the loud (and silent) tears, the raucousness of strident laughter, the silky manipulations of work and society, the remonstrance of failed romances, and the tentative and ill-at-ease expressions (and triumphantly evocative demonstrations) of all the colours of moviedom, what films essentially seek to draw forth are the myriad hues of life itself. And with some effort, a little study and nudged by the knowing words of a great critic such as Ebert, films acquire a more realistic dimension – like a parable, they enable us to draw our own conclusions of what happened. In inexplicable ways, I have also found occasions where I have been able to apply some of these learnings to my own existence.

Ebert’s critiques of films as published in his website and in his books are wonderful pieces to read. They are peppered with unique observations, bits of humour and embellished at times with the rarest of rare truths, which are more likely to find their way into great spiritual books and discourses. Thank you, Ebert.

“For me, the film is like music or a landscape: It clears a space in my mind, and in that space I can consider questions.”

- what Ebert says in his review of Wender’s ‘Wings of Desire'