The Way Out

This following article is not to be taken as a comment on how I drive, or how I expect others to drive. Do not try this at home (even if you manage to get your car inside).


I took a bus to college today morining after a long time. I usually take a lift with a friend who goes by the stop and I decide its cheaper, more comfortable, and I don’t have to wake up as early. Today he wasn’t comjing, so my change of plans.

The journey was normal enough, except the girl next to me who kept leaning my way because the guy standing next to her was leaning her way because the girl behind him was leaning his way…public transport people!! So , I was nearing college when the bus had to take a turn to the left into the university area, and I happened to look up at the road that goes on straight, and I saw it for the first time. Indeed, this was a road that had been diverted for the most part of my stint in college, and it was opened in july after the metro opened up. I never looked that way because the bus turns before that and even when I drive my focus is on all the other cars leaning on mine because the car next to them is leaning on them and so on. Today somehow it caught my eye because the sky was blue, wide road was wide open and a perfect grey, and the entire frame of this road was so very inviting. It was calling to me (in that 1.5 seconds) to come and walk or drive down smoothly, happily and without care. Somehow I had missed this road before.

And it was funny because I realized that this was a major road that I had definitely traveled upon, and knew well, so such a fresh feeling from it was unfathomable. Maybe I just looked at it differently. Maybe I never looked at it before. Maybe we just need to give things time. Maybe we need to look again sometimes. Maybe all these aren’t maybe’s.

Nobel Announcement

I’m really waiting for this year’s Nobel Literature announcement.

Oh hey wait, its been announced. It is Harold Pinter.

Mighty interesting for me, I must say. See if you have seen my earlier posts you will see I am discovering a nascent interest in theatre, and so this announcement is some kind of divine approval. Let me look up some information on Pinter.

Born 10 October 1930 in East London, playwright, director, actor, poet and political activist.

Pinter has written twenty-nine plays including The Birthday Party, The Caretaker, The Homecoming, and Betrayal, twenty-one screenplays including The Servant, The Go-Between and The French Lieutenant's Woman, and directed twenty-seven theatre productions, including James Joyce's Exiles, David Mamet's Oleanna, seven plays by Simon Gray and many of his own plays including his latest, Celebration, paired with his first, The Room at The Almeida Theatre, London in the spring of 2000.

He has been awarded the Shakespeare Prize (Hamburg), the European Prize for Literature (Vienna), the Pirandello Prize (Palermo), the David Cohen British Literature Prize, the Laurence Olivier Award and the Moliere D'Honneur for lifetime achievement. In 1999 he was made a Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature. He has received honorary degrees from fourteen universities.

Pinter's interest in politics is a very public one. Over the years he has spoken out forcefully about the abuse of state power around the world, including, recently, NATO's bombing of Serbia. His most recent speech was given on the anniversary of NATO'S bombing of Serbia at the Committee for Peace in the Balkans Conference, at The Conway Hall June 10th 2000.

So now I know who it is that I will follow when I get the time. I am at a precarious situation where I have a resurgence of interest and will for reading, the loss of which I have been grappling with, and ironically now is the time that I need to focus my energies elsewhere, namely CAT. Alas… Even right now I have to divide myself between writing 2 tutorial papers for college by Monday and finish a sizeable chunk of maths course also. Uptil now I have been favouring the latter.

Pujo-accha

Went to our first pandal of the season yesterday (Oui, je suis Bengali). It was the Hauz Khas one, which is one of our staples every year, it being that my family has long links with that place. It was nice, though a bit hard on the senses though.

See we reached quite late in the evening, about 8 or so, and so there was no pujo or arati happening. It was time for all the munnas and munnis of the neighbourhood to show their talents on stage; whether it be plays, or songs or dances, whatsoever. So here we were on one side praying to Durga Thakur and there they were on the other side proclaiming it was the time to disco. At first it was sacrilege, and my outrage was exploring new bounds, but then I realized, why not?

See I just get up and come to the pandal, these people prepare, and they enjoy it because for them it might be a first step to something they are good at. And although the music was out of place, but the world is changing so you cannot have children dancing to kirtan or baul music now can you? Somehow I felt it was what was the spirit of any good festival and celebration, give everybody a chance and a place.

So Durga Pujo is something of a Christmas (see all Christmas issues of Archie) isn’t it?

But something was missing in me yesterday. Somehow I didn’t want to go. Not that I have lost my love for the occasion, not at all, but that I somehow felt the time could be better utilized (hah!!) by studying for CAT which is now just next month. That wasn’t a nice feeling.

Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh

Is there some technique to opening these printer cartidge containers or is it this ^#$%#* tough for everyone?

Hmmm...the death of me?

I was thinking of death.

Actually I was thinking of what to do. I was really bored at a point yesterday. Just didn’t feel like doing anything, and yet knew that I hated just lying there. I thought of sleeping, because sleepy is what I thought I felt, but thinking of sleep repulsed me. I was nauseated by sleep.

What was the answer here? What was time now? Every second felt like a weight weighing on me, like a disease asking “How long do you think you’ll suffer and how long will you actually bear it?”

What can I do? What can I do? WHAT CAN I DO?

The answer was simple. So simple that it flitted in my mind without actually even registering for a bit. And I think it was actually 2 or 3 seconds before I paused to go back. Did I just want to die?

And it was strange, and scary. Not scary because death itself is involved, but I realized that death is when life stops. When you cannot go any further, when you cannot do anything, then do you just lie down and stop? And it scared because maybe I may not be ready to die, but death might come because I’ve stopped.

It was a funny feeling. Like a curse almost. If you stop doing, you will die.




[Please bear with this extremely hap-hazard and seemingly foolish chapter. It is just something I wanted to get off my chest as a completely new feeling for me, something difficult to make sense of.]

Run Sumit, Run

I went jogging today. I figured I was putting on a bit too much weight around the middle, top and bottom everything. I have a 2-week break now and I wanted to make the most of it. See I walk enough through the year, and for some decent results in 15 days I needed to run. So I ran barely a couple of hundred metres or so and I was nauseous.

Man, am I that out of shape? Made me quite upset, but even more so thinking that there are millions of others who can’t even do this (I hope) and that’s bad news for all of us. Shape up People.

Well anyway, I’m reading a play called A Doll’s House by a Scandanavian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Its nice thus far. Actually I have another of his plays in my syllabus so I’m doing a bit og background.

I realized that drama interests me. It seems to be very deceptive in its methods and that makes it all the more pleasurable to unravel. There is a story behind every story ever written, but with drama played out in front of you it becomes more real. Gestures, words, dialogues, monologues, all take on a front which is entertaining and carry with it ideas and profoundities of everyday life. Although we study Modren European Drama, but I want to branch out in due time. I purchased, yesterday, a book called Three Modern Indian Plays – Tughlaq by Girish Karnad, Evan Indrajit by Badal Sircar and Silence! The Court is in Session by Vijay Tendulkar; all possibly among the most famous of Indian Theatre today.

And as Jean Genet has said somewhere, “tragedy is to be lived” – mine lies in the fact that I am yet to see a stage production.