Taamul

February’s Assamese heart is conflicted like the bride’s who is about to be a wife where its neither summer nor winter Leaving the trees confused Who are neither grey nor green The lazy sun unsure Whether to show up or not   It was a February when we didn’t meet   March, cursed forever to be in the shadow of April, Is dusty and parched, no poet to sing paeans Existing only to make way for bohag Yet, some defiant flowers bloom Like the ill-fated precocious child Violated by hungry bees, birds and bats As the disturbed, sad visitors bade goodbye to the unruly backwaters of Luit , when I too paid a visit   It was a March when we didn’t meet.   The first rains greening everything Cacophony of rambling colours all over Nasonis busy brushing the dust off their muga mekhela, gam kharu and madoli Dhoolias polishing their leather and blowing their pepah As the all-welcoming April ushered in the deadly guest once again ...

  I am hungry, but not for food I want to shout, but nothing that can be heard.   I am lonely, but not because I am alone I want to run, but not away.   I am sad, but not because I am not happy I want to drown, but not in water.    I am on top, but not of anything I want everything, but nothing I need.   I am nice, but not because I am good I want to share, but nothing that I own.   I am weak, but not because I am not strong I want to hoard, but nothing that can be bought.   I am alive, but not because I am not dead I want to fly, but not to anyplace.     

The tolerance of us Indians towards dirt and garbage in public spaces is a globally known and acknowledged fact. Probably because it is not only “unclean to clean” but also “unclean to notice” in India, where a complete class of people had been invented to merely take care of our waste and rubbish, as V.S. Naipaul observed with precise acerbity in his 1977 book  India-A wounded civilisation . Apart from this incredible tolerance to the ubiquitous garbage and the freedom to freely wet and litter, are there any other cultural forces that so universally binds and unites us a nation?  Therefore I am unsurprised that the ‘ Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ or the Campaign for a Clean India has been able to maintain steam for over two months in the print and social media where the ‘trending’ news shift every 5 seconds. Because India will never run short of celebrities willing to pose with brooms nudging the garbage carefully. And city news and city people will never get enough of t...

Million, billion stars Scars of the darkest nights When not invisible behind The  moon  bright &  white Unrelenting  at death  even  Hell, the shadow of heaven, where fire brightest  burn ? Cacophony of life In the womb l ie deathly Of the night Until the sun  silently detonates t he light  Freeing the violence of existence Destruction, you owe the dawn? Survival of the fittest, creation Fire, knowledge, religion Science & civilisation Control, light, sin, war & annihilation In the conquest of fear, inquest of  the   dark Interrogate the beginning Why the end?

Sunlight, tube light, Tail-light, headlight Green light, red-light Street-light, home-light Torch-light, wicker light Illume everything Pining away the dark Under the bed, inside the eyes Within the sea of weakness and ignorance Insensitive senses Amplified desires Endless ends, eternal beginnings Dark days indeed  for darkness.

Compiling a list of favourite books is not as easy as it seemed when Chitra nominated me. Perhaps because our expectations and experiences from a book changes as we change. Thus as I reflected about those books which left a great deal of impression on me, I realised that they varied with the distinct phases of my life, which at the risk of oversimplification, I have categorised into- school, college-university and working life. Below are my top 10 books from my school life- the volume 1. School life - “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.” I didn’t inherit a reading library from my family. And the among the gifts that I got during my birthdays which could be read were brass vessels  embedded  with my name. As kids, buying a book, apart from what was prescribed in our school curriculum was a luxury my father couldn’t afford. But what they did, clearly beyond their financial bounds, was to pu...

Deciding on movies to watch and movies to ditch (in the theatre) is not a difficult job. Particularly when you are a married person living in India on a student allowance. With Hindi language films made in India, it’s even simpler. Do not watch anything unless it is directed by one of them four directors whose work I absolutely adore. One Sunday (supposed to be last Sunday but for my lazy ass), I broke this rule. There were two main reasons: 1. It came heavily recommended by a friend. 2. The film was produced by one of ‘the’ 4 directors. And while I wasn’t disappointed, it didn’t blew me off either. However, my wife absolutely loved it and later argued that it would be impossible to find an Indian woman or a girl who would not love this movie. And till now her theory has held as water-tight as Newtons’ theory of gravity. The movie in the question is Queen directed by Vikas Bahl, who co-owns Phantom Films with Vikramaditya Motwane (see Udaan ) and Anurag Kashyap (see Black F...

In review:  Empire’s Garden: Assam And The Making Of India •by Jayeeta Sharma • Permanent Black • Rs 695 Renaissance, Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution ushered in the modern era in Europe and ultimately to the entire globe, notably through the institutions of capitalism and colonialism. Colonial and capitalist induced transformations as well as the resistances offered against such changes initiated complex processes whereby many modern nations and nationalities were formed. India is but the result of such processes. Although there is a considerable volume of scholarship on the origin of the idea of India, the respective histories of its numerous divergent constituent nations are often washed out and obliterated in the process of creating a grand assimilative history. Also missed out are the subaltern perspectives of nationhood from lesser known ethnic societies. For Assam and the northeast in general, who have been purportedly over-marginalized in the popular and acade...

On the long treeless walks, The unyielding Sun shone hot and hard. You had an umbrella. Did I love you? Or did I just wish some shade? Classes were boring hostel moribund. You pure entrancing charm. Did I love you? Or did I just want myself to lose unto you? My songs sucked. And you had the Bee Gees the Carpenters and Dan Seals Did I love you? Or did I just wish Music? Life not interesting, death not arresting, yet enough. You seemed both, yet more. Did I love you? Or did I just wish to inhabit A third world? Thoughts were insipid And you were my La belle mélange Did I love you? Or did I just aspire to indite, poetise, criticise? Mind was complicated And you had a neck, two breasts. Did I love you? Or did I just long to indulge in your innocent simplicities? I was lost And you were paths. Promising me a home, a light. Did I love you? Or did I just seek religion?

By Allwin Jesudasan & Rajkamal Goswami An edited version of this article appears in the print edition of  Down To Earth, July 15, 2013 “Varsham muluka naa TV paathutu beedi suthitte irrupen. Varshathulle inthe oru vaaram oru kavalai illaame na inge thanguven.” (All year I sit in front of the TV, rolling beedis. In the one week that I spend here, I just relax and enjoy my stay here without worrying about anything else in the world) remarked a middle-aged woman ‘pilgrim’ from a small hamlet of Alangulam Taluk of Tirunelveli District of Southern Tamil Nadu.  She was replying to our query as to why she came to visit the the Sorimuthu Iyyanar Temple inside the Kalakad Mundanthurai Tiger Reserve (KMTR) during the annual Adi-amavasya festival. We had asked this question because to us, it was difficult to understand the motivations that drove hundreds of thousands of people to travel and camp inside forests. During this festival a large area of the forest around the temp...