TO EACH HIS OWN----STAR

There are various reasons to cherish Amir Khan’s directorial debut ‘Taare Zameen Par’ as a memorable film. It appears to have all the facets for enabling it to stand the test of time and be recounted as a veritable ‘classic’ in the years to come. Not least because of its poignant rendition of the travails of today’s children toiling across their childhoods overburdened by the expectations of everybody around them. Not least because of wonder kid Darsheel Zafary’s heart warming portrayal of a gawking child hindered by dyslexia. And not least because of the soulful music composed by that inimitable trio of Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy. TZP has to be cherished for all these and more.
The reason I shall keep returning again and again to TZP is because it subtly imparted to my attention the prime importance of individual perspectives. As we are made to follow the character of young Ishaan Nandakishore Awasthi’s journey from being a stammering, bumbling failure to the school’s most popular boy and a painter with budding genius, we are made to realize that truth, reality and success are ultimately the question of perspective. That is why Ishaan, unlike his elder ‘successful’ brother does not play tennis and top his class, rather he exercises his imagination and captures them on his canvas with astonishing skill. This is one of the most vital ‘messages’ that TZP communicates to its audience and it is nowhere more aptly depicted than in the scene where Ishaan is asked to comment on a poem describing a village river in his Hindi class. His answer is to hesitatingly explain the relativity of individual impressions-that things are simply not what they appear to be, but rather as we view them from our respective perspectives so that the ripples in a puddle of rainwater on the road might throw our minds to the tossing waves of the Atlantic and a harried vessel caught in its mercy.
The film is also an aesthetic capturing of boarding school life. Anyone who has been a part of boarding school will instantly relate to the vacant look on Ishaan’s countenance as he watches his family leave him behind on the doorstep of his dormitory.
The background score accompanying that heart wrenching moment is painfully captured in the lyrics of the song ‘Ma’ as a young disoriented mind slowly adjusts itself to living among strangers. Boarding school is not all nostalgia and bonhomie, neither is it only tears and longing, but like life itself , a portrait of both. I have to return to TZP because I too like Ishaan have been part of such a life. Long after the credits have stopped rolling, the film’s impact leaves you ruminating with fresh thought and emotion. For all these and much more TZP will be cherished. It was once said of Satyajit Ray’s ‘Pather Panchali’ that it wasn’t just a film, but a document of the human condition. It can safely be said that TZP earns the same laurel.

SEHWAG'S SPECIAL

Leaving behind hefty discussions on Virender Sehwag’s batting ability and analyzing the mastery of his strokeplay, an important perspective would be to view the impact of his whirlwind innings on the status of Test cricket today. When Sehwag got out this morning trying to flay the South African pacer Makhaya Ntini for the umpteenth time through the off-side, he had already made a mockery of many milestones. His 319 came off just 304 deliveries punctuated with 43 boundaries and 5 sixes; all at an astonishing strike rate of 104.93. Apart from re-establishing his reputation as one of the most destructive batsmen the game has ever known, his innings left a shining imprint on the feasibility of Test cricket being a crowd puller to the hilt. The memories of the T-20 World Cup is still green in our minds and together with the latest euphoria surrounding the advent of the Indian Premier League, 20-20 cricket has gripped the general imagination with a frenzy that’s hard to miss. Nevertheless, Sehwag’s heroics has reinstated the case for the future of Test cricket. It is here to stay and how. Players, purists and commentators have always maintained that Test cricket is ‘real’ cricket, that which separates the men from the boys. The main objections to its appeal for the modern day spectator came about with cricket being modified into its One-day and 20-20 avatars. Questions were raised on whether the longer version had in itself the ingredients to keep the TV audience glued to their seats and draw enough crowds to pack large stadiums. Well, Sehwag’s innings was a resounding answer to all these questions and much more. There were crowds all right. A packed Chepauk Stadium witnessed some of its most wild scenes of elation as Sehwag went about marauding the South African bowling. Commentators sat up and applauded as did the whole world to witness the Nawab of Najafgarh walk into elite company of batting greats such as Sir Donald Bradman and Brian Lara as the only other players to have scored triple hundreds twice in their careers. The distinctive traits of 20-20 cricket that has found such wide acclaim such as cricket being played at a frenetic pace, a deluge of boundaries resulting from dramatic stroke play were all present as Sehwag demonstrated in his usual brutal manner. A strike rate of 104.93 is one that most batsmen would crave for to feature in their 20-20 statistics. It was hardly surprising then that this was the fastest triple century in the history of Test cricket. It was as if the essence of 20 over cricket was magnified manifolds onto a 90 over canvas. Same excitement, triple the fun. After all expecting a triple century in 20-20 cricket remains a logistical impossibility. Thus, Sehwag’s innings has not bolstered the future of Test cricket, its future was always secure. It has only reminded us that Test cricket is here to enthrall us for atleast the next 319 years (triple centuries anyone?).

THE DEATH WISH

The dream that slowly rose in soft vapour
Was caught up in the ceiling fan
And amidst 240 rotations per minute
Torn to shreds,descending fluff-like
Back to the cool mosaic.

But phoenix-like,it reforms and rises
Up again for its slow transcendence
From amidst the cluttering furniture
To the rarified air of the night sky above
And again the fatalistic embrace of that swirling killer.

The flickering tube light groans empathy
Do its neons buzz with feeling?
The wheeling terrorist constantly swishes
In its menacing trance;the sole overseer of this little room.
The poor upholstery is crouched dumb in meek obeisance.

And what of that dream,its insatiable attempts?
Its torn shreds,its shards and shrapnels?
O cruelty!Is it to be locked in this constant death role
Of being born to be torn,of being torn to be born. Let rather tears embalm it with their liquid wreaths and follow its quiet death.

If only once it could soar like Icarus
And bask in the ephemeral ether of freedom
Spreading its wild waxen wings to float in immensity
And greet the new born sun in its eastern baths;just once.
Such that its mortal wings melting,it dashed to the earth
In sunlit glory. .

LOVE IN A DEPARTMENTAL STORE

A Sonnet


Her slight frame like a candle’s flame
Quivers at my sight. I feel the delicate moment
On my palette, buzzing in my ears,
Smudging my sight, growing into something immense.
I sense she reciprocates. She feels it too.
It is strange. My pulse has risen.
My heart beats within the hollow of my ribs
Like an abandoned dinghy,
Drumming the shore from
The menace of a troubled lake.
Alas! I have no heavenly bow to string
To the applause of thunder.
Weighing my burdens, I approach
Her smiling face and that courtly greeting – “Next!!”

PANGS

1.

"Have you ever seen a dry leaf,dead,
Amber,crunchy to the touch,in
Folds of devouring flames?
Lapping it up,licking it forth,
Within and without,working its infernal tongue?

A fatal embrace,crackling and electric
Subsuming its veins;that once had life
With another life,a life lived immolating to final nullity.
O yes,the fire has a forked tongue,
Hissing,smouldering,caressing,inviting.

Like a forbidden touch to a forbidden place,
A tenor of waves up the spine,
Up to the brain boiling in its liquids,
Passing through to scalding flesh.
Flesh.Flesh that reverberates,quivers,
Tongue,flesh,touch,lustily pure,absolute
Defiled by nothing,all feeling and
Sensation.

The withering,moaning leaf
In the arms of its nemesis,ripped apart,
Exhumed,exhausted,ravished,ravaged.
"O it is nothing",you smile and say----
"A forest fire in the Andes;a common geographical occurence".
Ask the devastated vegetation,going
Up in so much spiritual smoke."


2.


The parched earth painfully awaits,
Scarred about with cracks and fissures
In arrested stillness : agonizing to the eyes.
Scarcely moving,an infinity of fixity.
Waiting,biding for that one drop
Crystal and luscious to descend from space
Charged with the force of heavens
To fall and scatter its graveyard silence.

Invigorate,Infiltrate the creaking crevices,
The arid torpor pervading the choking stems,
Chunks of clay that have clung together with morbid terror,
With the nectar of life,the element of evanescence.
Rushing through,reviving,replenishing,
Revisiting,resusciating,regenerating.
One drop,a single stellar speck
To remind the earth that it is thirsty,
Oh! so long,so tantalizingly thirsty.
One drop,an infinitesimal dot to set
The wheel in motion,Create,Impregnate.

The labouring earth awaits : a puny sapling,
Grand and green stretches its crumpled shoot."

HUNGERFORD STREET

The light is red.
Traffic stationary. Purring. Waiting.
Tension mounting. A precipitous moment
Of apprehension. Tension.

A few honks, a blare, here and there.

A tribe of wildebeests muted on the savannah,
Making their way through the grasslands,
To the next water hole.
Wait. In apprehension. Tension.
On the banks of the swamp with quiet breath,
To the dance of hooves and cruel death.
A tussle of horns, here and there,
The irritation of flies in the air,
Wait. To wade across the stream,
Of crocodiles in a gleam,
Playing hide and seek,
And little bo-peep.
A time for fangs and claws,
And wise saws. Apprehension. Tension.

Their leader emits a snort.
The light turns green for the right.
The rest start their engines in a diastole motion,
Smooth.
Like a moisturizing lotion.
The glistening bodies swerve right,
In a screech, like leeches slithering down
A mossy beech.
Like relaxing elastic,
In plastic perfection, the cars strain right.
And the gaping lane swallows them.
In large mouthfuls, gulps and gasps.
Swallows them in
To the last tyre and axle,
The last face peering out the window,
The shopping bags at the back,
The puppy on the lap,
The smiles, cheers, tears and fears,
Of lives lived and deaths doled,
All swallowed, wallowed into the waiting road.

Across the stream, their leader turns back to see
His community. Of what’s left of those eyes keen,
And the what-might-have-been.