Winter
Winter is here. Mr. Das who notices such things recently declared
that his tea-water for two took a minute more to boil. In the
morning, when I shuffle to the toilet on my bare feet the terrazzo
bites. And of course the calender says it will be December soon.
Many friends will move down to
Siliguri. Hope they wont miscalculate like it happened a few years ago.
While our winter had been one long session of sunshine, something snapped
in Siliguri and the chill was unbearable. Our people however are
known to exaggerate the cold of plains winter. They say, perhaps not without
some meteorological logic, Delhi को चिसो
त कहाँ यस्तो हुन्छ , त्यसले
त चिल छ नि हो।
Books
Haven't been reading much. Except a
book on jazz, But Beautiful. The other one I read earlier was
the encyclopedic History of Jazz by Ted Gio. But Beautiful is
different. It tries to recreate in a rambling, at times stream of
conscious kind of narrative the imagined biography of jazz greats
like Monk, Mingus, Ben Webster. For example everyone knows how Monk
took the hit for Bud Powell when cops discovered the latter's heroin.
The story is that Monk was arrested instead of Powell and had his
cabaret card confiscated so that he could not perform his jazz
publicly. This lead to other consequences that Monk fans know about.
This episode is re-imagined in this fashion.
Note the syncopated prose, the
brilliant angularity of the images..almost like chops from Monk's
piano.
Cops approach the cats in the car. Monk snatches Powell's
heroin and throws it out.
"Monk snatched it from him and
sent it butterflying out of the window, landing in a puddle and
floating there like a little origami yatch"
The cops
approach...
"Monk and Bud sat and watched the red and blue
lights from the prowl car helicoptering around them, rain sweating
down the white glare of the windshield, the metronome flop of the
wipers. Bud rigid, holding himself barbed-wire tight."
Monk
is interrogated.
"- What's your name?"
-Monk
-You
got ID?
Monk's hand moved towards his pocket-"
The cop
sees the ID
"Thelonious Sphere Monk. That you?
-Yeah.
The word came clear of his mouth like a tooth.
-Big name.
Rain
falling into pools of blood neon"
Cops seize Monk's
card, 'toss it like a cigarette into a puddle'.
The episode
ends..
"Monk looked down at the rain pattering his photo,
a raft in a crimson lake."
Isn't
that But Beautiful?
Willim Claxton the renowned jazz photographer once in an interview said, "I was up all night developing when the face appeared in the developing tray. A tough demeanour and a good physique but
an angelic face with pale white skin and, the craziest thing, one tooth
missing -- he'd been in a fight. I thought, my God, that's Chet Baker." There is an account of the fight (or rather the beating) which lead to that Chet Bakers's famously photogenic dental deficit.
Speaking
of books here is another one I read. This is courtesy Mr Sakya whom I
have been pestering now for years. The book is called Ullar
and was quite a sensation when it first came out. Ullar
is a terai term for unbalance. It is usually applied to the
instability of a tonga when a skewed distribution of load causes it
to totter. In the story, PremLalwa's tonga suffers Ullar when it is
hired by a politician's acolytes to ferry a victory procession
through town. The horse dies and PremLalwa comes to the end of his
tethers begging the victorious politician to buy him a horse. Of
course I make it sound very simple. But Ullar is perhaps one of the
best books I have read in any language. Period. The characters are
all stereotypes, the situation cliches but there is something about
the manner in which the sentences are strung and the episodes
organized that makes it very compelling reading. PremLalwa is in love
with a prostitute Draupadi who plies here trade with a workman like
matter of factness. The reportage too is the same. For example after
a policeman has unpaid sex with her, she washes her 'secret organs'
with dettol. It is only before PremLalwa that she feels some kind of
shame undressing. The politician after all does not buy him the horse.
PremLalwa has to sell his land to do so. And in that commerce lies a
burden of a cruel cycle. The horse that died too had been bought by
selling land. And after each such transaction PremLalwa gets
displaced, farther and farther away towards the margins, the Ullar
aggravates. In the end PremLalwa decides to marry Draupadi. He
realizes that decision may not go too well with those around him. But
with cynical pragmatism he plans a party. Booze and meat would after
all make them forget. With his plans in place he goes to Draupadi.
And then one is treated to perhaps the most poignant ending of a
Nepali (or any for that matter) novel. As he approaches Draupadi's
door....
र
त्यसपछि अलिकति माया ,
अलिकति
अधिकार र अलिकति आग्रहसहित
प्रेमललवा जोडले करायो -
दृअपदी
Currently I am reading another novel by
the same author. This one is called Loo after the hot dry wind that
you may have perhaps read about in Monsoon Asia. Nayan Raj Pandey has
a keen sense of humour. People in a tea shop are discussing the heat.
In the sky a ferocious sun is blazing down on the villagers. One of
them says, आकाशमा सुर्य
भगवानको एकलौटी दादागिरी
चलिरहेछ। The protagonist , a young boy, muses
मलाई त तात्तातो
तेलमा झ्वाई पारेको बडेमानको
आलुचोप जस्तो लाग्यो सुर्य.
Kite
When we were young we flew kites. I
think I exaggerate. Mine may not have ever left the ground. But still
I remember certain things about kites. For example to the serious
kite flier a kite with a tail was an ultimate diss. Also the hill way
of flying the kite was different than those that they showed in the
movies. Hill kitefliers negotiated their kites straight from the
लट्टाई. The plainsman had
their लट्टाई on the
ground and paid more attention to the strings. Another thing I
remember is the string. Gun was supposed to be deadly for
kite-fights. Sengupta was a sissy string. Then there was that whole
matter of the मंज़ा. Crushed
tubelight was supposed to be a killer. Of course the purist capped
his मंज़ा ritual by rubbing
certain things on the string. घिउ
कुमारी was understandable but you may not believe
the कुकुर को गु.
Then when we flew our Dasain kites on
the eve of our leaving for the teagardens , we used to unspool the
entire length of the thread. And when the kite was a mere speck in
the darkening sky the thread was snapped. The kite was lost, swallowed up by the evening.
One final rumination. On a still day
with no hint of a breeze to give the kite a lift, one whistled. It
was generally believed that whistling roused the wind from its
slumber. And invariably it did. Was it some psychology at work?These
days I tend to believe otherwise. Could the theory of chaos and
non-linear effects have some explanation? After all the minute
variations in pressure that our whistling introduced in the complex
equations of weather could have lead on to much else besides a a
helpful wind. Could we have sown the wind and someone else reaped the
whirlwind?
