A Malgudi in Denmark 18/10/2009
Last week, I attended a classical guitar concert. Why am I blogging about it? You will know soon enough. Or perhaps you won't. I don't. Staying in Aarhus, which is in its heart and soul a European village, is being bombarded in my head several times about how urban Bangalore is. If R K Narayan lived in Denmark, this would be his Malgudi. I look outside the window every morning at 7 am and ACTUALLY see the sun rise. The world begins in the morning slowly, gradually, like how it is meant to be...not in the frenzied, go-away-morning way I am used to. The newspaper 'comes' at only around 10 am. And there is no scramble for it. I live with 13 other Danes, my housemates. I notice their little fights, their little jealousies, and also their forgetting all that is petty and coming together to cook elaborate community lunches and dinners. And do you believe it? They actually sit around in the evening, play chinese whispers, trivial pursuit and monopoly. Yes, just like that. With lots of giggles for accompaniment. And invariably there is some un-loud music playing faintly in the background. The television, with its two-and-a-half channels remains switched off.They also bake bread. Here, being provincial is not a crime, it perhaps might be a virtue. I still don't understand the Danes enough to take a stand on this. And so, in banks, you see people stroll in with bunches of parsley and fat broccoli sprouting out of their eco-friendly shopping bags. Wearing pink slip-ons. Supermarket aisles have toddlers with running noses happily let loose. People cycle to work, to the pub, to a formal reception, to everywhere. I have met several strangers while walking to the college who I keep seeing here and there. And smile at. Everybody it seems really can know everybody. A few hundred yards from the place I live, there are woods just like Frost described famously. They are lovely, dark and deep. And many times, two roads or more too diverge. But I wanted to write about the guitar concert! How did I find out about it? I was walking back from the supermarket, when a little notice stuck on a pole caught my eye. It did not scream; it just plainly informed that an 'international' guitar festival is on at Aarhus and the Prague Quartet will play. Now I know nothing about the Prague Quartet but something about those words reminded me of 'Equal Music' and such free associations in my mind are times when serendipity is waiting to knock. So I let it inside. The only urbane thing about this whole business was that I bought the ticket online. So on the evening of the concert, which was to be held in a centuries' old theatre in the old town of Aarhus, I set out. I actually love my propensity to get lost. It has shown me things I would otherwise have never seen. But I digress (like always). That day I didn't like it all. I had got lost again and it was getting dark and foreboding. (All this lovely European village business ceases to be so lovely when night sets in. Then, it is just a dark, lonely stretch of road lined with trees with no one to turn to, to ask for directions.) I kept on walking gingerly when I spotted two men strolling along. I ran up to them and asked them about the theatre. "Oh! We are going the same way..come with us". So they escorted me to the old theatre. We were guitar buddies you see. Inside, no one was younger than 50. Or so it seemed to me. And no one had heard of the 21st century. I was in jeans and T-shirt. The rest of the thirty-odd people were in their best evening wear bought in 1760. One was even wearing a top hat and his coat had tails. There were only discreet murmurs to be heard and this was in the lobby where one would imagine, you could speak to your heart's content. (Just to put this in context, imagine standing outside Inox before you are let inside Theatre no. 4) The concert was to begin at 8 pm and so we were courteously let inside by a fully-dressed usher. It was a theatre that could seat around 200. We were thirty. It was 7.45 pm. The stage was around 6 feet by 6 feet. There were four chairs and four stands to keep the music notes. And absolute silence. At sharp 8 pm, the quartet, four genial looking men from Czech, strided in, bowed elaborately and spoke nothing. Began playing. I am no western classical expert but their expertise, their joy at playing the instrument and the way they made love to the guitar was transporting. They could squeeze a village bonfire dance out of those strings, they could just as easily turn maudlin and make you think of long lacy curtains and a woman in a bonnet looking out of a window, waiting for her lover to come home. They played so well that thirty clapping hands echoed long enough for them to do two encores. And how did they do the encores? They bowed and bowed and they sprinted to the green room, sprinted back, bowed and bowed again and sprinted to the green room and sprinted back and then sat and played!! And when it was over and I was going back in the bus, there was the perfect ending. The bus driver turned round and said, 'so, did you enjoy your concert'? (While going, I had asked a bus driver for directions. Turns out, it is the same bus driver who drops me back home as well.) My face split open with glee. I nodded my head vigorously and looked out at the dark, sprinkly sky, a sky that has reaffirmed my faith that more than 100 stars exist in the galaxy.  Before they came  While they were there... 5 Comments Wordly wise(r) 08/09/2009
The Danes are apparently the happiest people on earth. They won't ever let you know that. And you won't know if you look at them and if you haven't read your newspaper's foreign page ever. You can go on looking at them surreptitiously (like I did) and wonder what makes them so happy. They won't stare back and strangely they don't seem to mind your staring either. (The English would have minded and I have realised it much to my chagrin when I used to do the obviously-not-so-surreptitious staring on the London tube.) When you read stuff of this sort that generalises the emotions of a country as a whole, small as the country may be, and the generalisation is as simple and as pat as it comes, it sits in your head like the ghee you rub on the kadai before making dosa. It is the defining base for all your thoughts about the people of a state. For me, the Danes are happy, Lahoris are hospitable, the English are Wodehousian, the French are stylish, the Germans are aggressive, and you get my point. Indians? Well, that’s for another blog :) And when you sit in a class with a redhead Finnish girl on your right and a beautiful almond-eyed braided-haired Kenyan on your left, listening to a German speak in the softest of tones; the kadai is rid of that ghee all by itself. And the dosa begins to crumble. Having proclaimed to be a world citizen several times, when you come within kissing distance of the 'peoples of the world', it is frightening to discover how far away one is from being a true world citizen. Years of mistrust of such aforementioned generalisations prove to be true. And years of sneaking belief in the same generalisations also prove to be true. All those misconceptions and myths then float swiftly, like muck, to the surface. And then they get splished and sploshed into your new knowledge. The 'who am I' question, no, not the rhetoric, existential one but the more prosaic, rooted one pierces through all this thickening flotsam like a sharp diver and raises its head. It is as if the brain has rubbed its hands together and is polishing a brass plate where is written that I am an Indian, I am a Bangalorean even (see, the plate is getting shinier) and I am helpless to prevent it from doing so. But then you let that plate hang where it should. World citizenry, you realize and begin to accept, is reinforcing and forgetting your identity at the same time. And so you re-enter gingerly into the flotsam. And begin clearing the muck. Honestly, I did not start out to say all this. I started with the Danes and their happiness. At the risk of generalisation again, I say they are generally happy because they are secure in their own world. A friend says they are 'koopa mandukas in a well full of gold'. She may be right. Ironically, I am studying globalisation in a town where national language and national identity seem so deeply ingrained that the rest of us can only peer at it and wonder. And it looks like it will be long before the world manages to shake and stir this core like it has in many other countries. We are Danes, we speak Danish, we are happy eating our kartofler and rogbread, (no, we won't call it potato and rye bread), playing our board games and getting excited about ice-kicking competitions and drinking cartloads of beer. And if you actually ask them why they are considered to be so happy, I can bet my last kroner they would um and ah for about 10 seconds and with a straight face give the standard explanation they give for all their eccentricities -- 'it is the beer'. No. 75, M G Road 31/07/2009
When Shantanu Datta, then resident editor of Indian Express asked me in his staccato, point blank way what I saw in Deccan Herald that I wanted to quit Indian Express (he meant THE Indian Express, THE upholder of truth, THE national daily), I had no answer. (I was 21 and I didn't have answers for many things. That's well, another story.) I haven't yet figured out what I really saw in Deccan Herald that September (when I got the offer letter after a typical Deccanesque two-month wait) and what I kept on 'seeing' for the past nearly nine years. I only had vague notions to go by. DH was then actually 'Karnataka's leading daily' and this I knew. I had always been an Indian Express fan more so because it used to carry full page movie advertisements on Fridays and I used to sneak to the sound studio on the third floor of our house to grab a copy and scan them feverishly for Aamir Khan's pictures. But my father always insisted on making me read DH. DH was even then boring :P but it was reliable. If anybody wanted to confirm whether day after was a government holiday, nah they didn't reach out for Express. DH it was. Exam timings have changed? DH again. Though in a house of more than 45 people, it was hard to find the paper by the end of the day. But I digress. I had had a fun 24 odd days of internship in DH and that had kinda familiarised me with the place. But that did not prepare me for my first day, which happened to be ahem Karnataka Rajyotsava. I, with a 21-year-old's naivete, expected gaiety.What I got instead was the strangest welcome where the big boss (let's just not take names ok..those who know will know :)) warned me in conspiratorial tones that DH is full of schemers and people who indulge in politics and I should guard my back. And then I was put on the 'State Desk' where there were on that day only two people, one of whom took one look at me, deciphered that I could understand Kannada, fumbled with some 'computer sheets' and thrust a barely visible printout of a Honnali datelined story on an Ambedkar statue installation at me. My last day happened to be bang in the middle of the week, a Wednesday. I, with my 30-year-old's naivete, expected sobriety. What I got instead was well, gaiety, first at a lunch with chairs fit for kings :), and then a half-mad photo session when I was desperately trying to talk on the phone to a royal-sounding 'Chandralekha', figuring out tax exemption and smiling at the camera. I still haven't seen the photos. And then of course, a proper escort right to the edge of M G Road by two dear friends. (Now you two, stop thinking I am being mawkish.I am not. And I do think chocolates are overrated.) In between these two days, there have been several bright, lighted, dimmed and dulled ones. What I did see, rather felt in these many days was a butterbeer kind of comfort -- DH was boring, solid, not-so-reliable; it was also like a comforting duvet, an escapist, indulgent cave, an un-guilty addiction. Yeah, I know, it does not sound like an office. But that was how it was for me. All good things come to an end and am so glad they actually do and that's not just a proverb. I am no Snape to squeeze out memory as a white film and fill it in a vial. I can only list out what's floating on top of the muck that is my head. * DH before the so-called 'modern front office' had a playgroundish feel. With a lever kind of thing that you had to push to enter. Will never forget this one. * The 'first' editor was the biggest enigma in the office. He was, if you will, DH's very own Aditya Chopra. * What a draw the canteen was for us poor starved souls from Express...I had even smuggled in two friends once. And you had to buy coupons for 10 p 15 p etc from the 'front office'. * The 5 'o' clock break was one of DH's best traditions, which is sadly sadly not really so exciting anymore thanks to change in shift timings. The factory siren, and then the 'collecting' of state desk people to troop out in unity, the old canteen's school benches and that mad evening when everybody tried to squeeze into a single bench and in a particularly boisterous moment, a particularly sensitive girl was pushed and pushed to the edge and then went thud! * The solving of the mystery of our then Bhadravathi correspondent's great insistence in excruciating tones of servility to take a poor quality photo of a blood donation camp -- it was his photo! He was lying on the bed donating blood! * The many excellent imitations of Gundu Rao, practiced to perfection by several. * The story of Pothan Joseph's ghost * The great trio of Seetharam Kesari, Narayan Swamy and Gayathri Nivas (sorry guys, without taking names, this was no fun) shouting at each other and the rest of the world every evening, unfailingly, all three in three different pitches (gayathri's exasperated high pitch, narain's booming low pitch, and seetharam's quivering nowhere pitch). All tense, harassed and overworked but enjoying it nevertheless. That was very obvious. * The big fascination for the internet desk (this was before all desks had their own internet..) I routinely used up all the charm I had to send one mail a day to Siddharth. * The 3 to 10 van driver who saw ghosts near Konankunte and enjoyed regaling us poor souls with tales of women in white stopping his gaadi. * The night when the same driver drove with such energy that the aforementioned particularly sensitive girl was thrown from the seat facing the road to the one opposite...a full arch. * The midnight feasts -- once from Pizza Hut, several times trips to the seedy Savera, the chaiwala... * The mystery of the spiralling staircase. Why is it there? Who has climbed the entire length till now? * The shoe and sweater allowances. Loved them. Actually there are several more but one should stop somewhere, shouldn't one? As always, would love to hear what memories of DH float in your heads. Coke ka nasha 27/05/2009
Actually nobody around me is quite able to understand exactly why I am so excited about Coke Studio. Harumph. It is NOT a rave party destination. And yes, it could have been worded better. Music to the eyes 15/04/2009
Have you ever found the right music for the right book? The two or three times I have, it has felt as if the notes crawled into the book and the words stretched out into music. After a while, I cannot think of one without thinking of the other. It's happening nowadays with this book I am reading -- Aatish Taseer's 'Stranger to history'...a journey through Islamic lands. And a journey I am holding hands and going along, thanks to Yamini who decided it was "my kind of book". And so every night, at 10.00 or so, I put on a combination of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rahat, Kailash Kher, Fateh Ali Khan (of the Gwalior gharana), Ali Zafar, Ali Azmat and Atif Aslam, slowly, quietly, switch off most of the lights in the home, lean back on my blue cushions and go on this journey. I have stilled all my speed-reader instincts for this one. This is one journey that encompasses humanity, universalism, or the lack of it, empathy or the want of it and places that have swallowed yearning whole. Speeding along will not work here, will it? Dilli hai mere yaar 26/03/2009
You either love Delhi or hate it. Whatever I have seen of it till now is mostly unlovely but fascinating so I am yet undecided. My this time's visit was spectacularly unlovely despite being surrounded and smothered by certified beauty. There were only two patches of sunshine as I call them. Actually three patches. The first was the twinkling, long-lashed beautiful eyes of my little cousin. The second was her quiet brother's quieter love for music, only apparent if you care to glance at his mostly downturned eyes. The third was serendipity of the best kind. Sitting alone in Karnataka Bhavan and twiddling with the remote was getting to me when my hands automatically stopped at DD Bharti. There was, on the screen, Kishore Kumar in his element. Doordarshan was re-telecasting his concert, recorded oh, perhaps three decades ago. Kalyanji-Anandji were conducting the music and there was Kishore playing to the non-existent gallery -- before singing Kora Kagaz, he fished out a blank paper from somewhere; after singing Roop Tera Mastana, he stumbled, as if drunk on his own voice... View from the last row 26/03/2009
Well, this is in Living but I thought it deserves to be here as well. So here we go. Gently fell the Jacaranda 23/02/2009
The Tabebuias are back. They are my only emotional anchor to this city. If and when I am displaced from here, it is only the Tabebuia yellow and the lavender Jacaranda that will make me think...oh I wish I was in Bangalore. Last year around this time, my very own Jacaranda tree that had its elbow over a muddy algae-green lake filled with white and pink lotuses near the art gallery, lost its balance finally (which it was threatening to from many years) and fell. Potter unvisited 30/01/2009
Whatever happened to the world’s collective Harry Potter obsession? Forget collective, what happened to my obsession with Potter? From picking up Deathly Hallows at 7 in the morning (after having booked it two months earlier) to reading it while still on the bike (which Siddharth, as amused and stoic as ever, drove steadily), reading it standing bang in the middle of Shanti Sagar’s darshini hustle (like they show in bad Telugu movies, when the hero first spots the heroine, the rest of the crowd is fuzzy...I felt exactly like that on that July 21 morning and well, felt so fuzzy that while walking back to the bike from the restaurant, while still reading of course, I bumped into a stray stone lump and my glasses fell. My pretend nonchalance reached absurd peaks at that point as I picked it up and continued to read. And continued reading the entire day till I turned the last page late evening, while it rained heavily outside and my back almost broke with the effort. And my bewildered parents wondered and siddharth sat waiting, the am-amused-but-am-resigned-to-my-fate smirk intact. Somewhere in the middle, I remember weeping when Harry buries, without using magic, what’s-his-name..sheee I have even forgotten names! Scrambled thank you 17/01/2009
Two days of homage. Yesterday, I ate my last omelette perhaps at Coffee House and day before yesterday, I ate scrambled eggs on toast. Alone and happy as I like it. I love eating alone. At home or in restaurants. Nothing really should come between you and food. Not love, not romance, not angst. Over-the-table conversations and dinner romances are uh-uh duh and duh.Thanks Cheryl for telling me about the no-frills scrambled. A next-door marvel that took me eight years to discover. | Hungry to write
I write on a wide range of subjects — books, places, social trends, television, personalities, everyday fashion, environment, women and health. But most of all, I enjoy writing on the Arts, culture, travel and food. Among my other interests are eating desserts, eating Chocolate Digestives, and eating my mother's palyas (curries). If that doesn't sound like a diverse set of leisure activities, I am also a sea food enthusiast. When I am not pursuing these enlightening hobbies, I like listening to television soaps while cooking, listening to music while eating, and eating while reading. The serious stuff
If you are wondering how blogs are any different from the 'Doodles and Squiggles' page (only if you are wondering), the blogs mostly contain articles published elsewhere, opinion pieces on current events and occurrences (my opinion of course) and reviews of what I love and hate. ArchivesFebruary 2012 CategoriesAll Use the RSS Feed option below to get updates about my blogs. |
RSS Feed