Tuesday, October 05, 2010
just my imagination
when i studied mass communication, or mass comm as we liked to call it, in the mid-eighties, our one-year programme was divided into interesting segments/papers. there was film, and my unfortunate little communication with satyajit ray; and advertising, how sure i was that i was never going back to it; journalism, which gave me the chance to spend a whole morning sitting next to dharmendra, smiling in absolute adoration never asking a single question, will someone tell me why they're so abjectly mandatory for interviews. never could convince my editor that i'd contributed a lot by taking all the trouble i had over my appearance - saree, cut away sleeve blouse, eyeliner at 7 am - c'mon i'm a serious journo type gimme a break. then there was market research, fundamental concepts of communication, public relations, press, television.
yet i don't recall a single paper on communication with another universe. you know, like mars, or venus, or the star i saw twinkling bright last night.
or that other nameless space people i know and love have gone to. what do some of us like to call it? yeah, the supernatural world.
of late i get the feeling this other world is trying to message me. and not just me, many of us.
(also the medium it uses is not yet known to us. maybe someday we'll get around to exploring it. and you, my dear internet, will cease to be the coolest.)
what else was that lucid thought i had in the train on my way to work yesterday.
I will hear today he is no more. He is gone.
i was sensing the words, neither hearing nor touching nor smelling or seeing them. just part of my sense, my knowledge.
a colleague of many years, exactly my age, had been diagnosed with the c word early april. the previuos week, doctors had moved him to a hospice. yeah, we all know enough to know that's last stage, or whatever label we've found for it. he and i worked together in the same department; we often disagreed, it was not unusual to find his exasperated scrawl across the job bag on my desk reminding me of deadlines (what a label we have here). i was usually late hehe. and i talked so much, that had him in a complete tizzy most times. yet, strangely, we got along. in fact, i was rather keen on making this eccentric, lottery-winning, card-playing, devoted-to-work, and generous-to-a-fault man my son-in-law. he was so very open with his wallet when my daughter was born. what's more, he was a rat, just like me.
so why on this monday morning 9.20ish was i sensing these words? i had not gone to see him in the hospital or hospice; there were many much closer to him than myself. ah, i thought, just my imagnation, let me walk into office and i'll know.
when i got in i went straight to my art director's room, she was very very close to my son-in-law. we talked about a job, we raved a bit, i turned to leave, yes everything was as usual. just my overactive imagination.
then she said: hey, a bit of a bad news.
at the wake, my boss (also a rat and extremely close to our fellow rat) told us how he'd suddenly woken up at 1.40 am (about the time our friend was dying), and how early morning two words drifted in and around him.
gone fishing. gone fishing.
he used to love to go fishing. sometimes the catch would be brought to office and the restaurant downstairs persuaded to steam it for us.
someone was communicating with us sure that a.m.
maybe i'll hear from there again? shall keep you posted.
ps: i went back to advertising to become the world's most unknown copywriter and my college team editor who so disapproved of my interview techniques is the big chief editor of a successful travel magazine today, we are both happily mass comming.
yet i don't recall a single paper on communication with another universe. you know, like mars, or venus, or the star i saw twinkling bright last night.
or that other nameless space people i know and love have gone to. what do some of us like to call it? yeah, the supernatural world.
of late i get the feeling this other world is trying to message me. and not just me, many of us.
(also the medium it uses is not yet known to us. maybe someday we'll get around to exploring it. and you, my dear internet, will cease to be the coolest.)
what else was that lucid thought i had in the train on my way to work yesterday.
I will hear today he is no more. He is gone.
i was sensing the words, neither hearing nor touching nor smelling or seeing them. just part of my sense, my knowledge.
a colleague of many years, exactly my age, had been diagnosed with the c word early april. the previuos week, doctors had moved him to a hospice. yeah, we all know enough to know that's last stage, or whatever label we've found for it. he and i worked together in the same department; we often disagreed, it was not unusual to find his exasperated scrawl across the job bag on my desk reminding me of deadlines (what a label we have here). i was usually late hehe. and i talked so much, that had him in a complete tizzy most times. yet, strangely, we got along. in fact, i was rather keen on making this eccentric, lottery-winning, card-playing, devoted-to-work, and generous-to-a-fault man my son-in-law. he was so very open with his wallet when my daughter was born. what's more, he was a rat, just like me.
so why on this monday morning 9.20ish was i sensing these words? i had not gone to see him in the hospital or hospice; there were many much closer to him than myself. ah, i thought, just my imagnation, let me walk into office and i'll know.
when i got in i went straight to my art director's room, she was very very close to my son-in-law. we talked about a job, we raved a bit, i turned to leave, yes everything was as usual. just my overactive imagination.
then she said: hey, a bit of a bad news.
at the wake, my boss (also a rat and extremely close to our fellow rat) told us how he'd suddenly woken up at 1.40 am (about the time our friend was dying), and how early morning two words drifted in and around him.
gone fishing. gone fishing.
he used to love to go fishing. sometimes the catch would be brought to office and the restaurant downstairs persuaded to steam it for us.
someone was communicating with us sure that a.m.
maybe i'll hear from there again? shall keep you posted.
ps: i went back to advertising to become the world's most unknown copywriter and my college team editor who so disapproved of my interview techniques is the big chief editor of a successful travel magazine today, we are both happily mass comming.
Friday, October 01, 2010
exodus
an earthquake has wrecked through haiti in the past week. 200,000 possibly dead, or dying beneath the mud, stone, crashed buildings, broken bodies. chaos everywhere, desperate pictures in the papers every day. today’s paper said the exodus back to the villages from the battered city has started. couple of days ago read about another kind of exodus. the one that the writer made as she journeyed from being a citizen of haiti to resident of the uk to citizen of that country. how does one let go of a country? you put miles and money between yourself and that land, you make a new life, you bring up your children in the new land. but does the country you left ever leave you?
and what makes you feel safe and whole in this new place? for me it was, among other things, my home in my place of residence these past 13 years. not my birthplace, not my school place, my college place, the place where i fell in love, the place where i tasted death for the first time, or got my first pimple.
a lovely, kindly land, but not mine. here my beautiful home kept me feeling connected.
actually, two homes. four years and a bit more in the first. exactly eight years in the next.
years in which my daughter grew from seven months to eight and a half years old. the tsunami struck. the fish in the restored koi pond gained grace and colour. the garden settled down, lush and in bloom. my mother died.
eight years, the longest i’d lived in any house in my entire life. ha, fifty this year.
still remember the day i walked into this house for the very first time. benny, our hapless agent, ever worried that my husband would not be comfortable with this or that,
(discovered this incomplete piece on the comp started on 22 jan 2010, just before we left 90 lts, now writing on)
said, "you think mistah robin is okay with jalan lim tai see?" he was referring to the name of the street: very chinese, compared to the coronation road, the duchess avenue, the queen astrid park so correctly continental just round the corner. a large old labrador ambled out of one of the rooms and filled the space with an air of comfort and trust. the maid said he was blind and he slept in the bathtub of the master (why never mistress) bathroom. we moved in toward the back of the house: large, open kitchen in black tiles, green lawn fringed with red haleconia beckoning at the french window along one wall. oh, how could one not be okay here.
on 15 february 2010, we moved out of 90 jalan lim tai see, mistah robin and his fam and his bag and baggage and 55 containers of fragile china, all equally miserable.
since then 90 lts has been broken, battered, and bashed. our beloved home is being transformed into someone else's dream home. i have tried my level best to like our new place. cloddy, large, full of staircases. almost a year has passed since i saw it the very first time and made that call to piklu, my younger brother. "hey, i just saw a place. so many stairs at the entrance, now what? how will you manage?" piklu, born with a funny vascular condition, growing up never to walk in comfort, his left leg weak, swollen with odd bundles of blood, now practically wheelchair bound, calmly said, "how many steps to the entrance?" "10." "I'll manage." earthquakes have ravaged china, pakistan; floods have washed away leh, up, bihar. piklu has died. how do you leave behind a country. how do you leave behind a home. how do you leave behind a brother.
and what makes you feel safe and whole in this new place? for me it was, among other things, my home in my place of residence these past 13 years. not my birthplace, not my school place, my college place, the place where i fell in love, the place where i tasted death for the first time, or got my first pimple.
a lovely, kindly land, but not mine. here my beautiful home kept me feeling connected.
actually, two homes. four years and a bit more in the first. exactly eight years in the next.
years in which my daughter grew from seven months to eight and a half years old. the tsunami struck. the fish in the restored koi pond gained grace and colour. the garden settled down, lush and in bloom. my mother died.
eight years, the longest i’d lived in any house in my entire life. ha, fifty this year.
still remember the day i walked into this house for the very first time. benny, our hapless agent, ever worried that my husband would not be comfortable with this or that,
(discovered this incomplete piece on the comp started on 22 jan 2010, just before we left 90 lts, now writing on)
said, "you think mistah robin is okay with jalan lim tai see?" he was referring to the name of the street: very chinese, compared to the coronation road, the duchess avenue, the queen astrid park so correctly continental just round the corner. a large old labrador ambled out of one of the rooms and filled the space with an air of comfort and trust. the maid said he was blind and he slept in the bathtub of the master (why never mistress) bathroom. we moved in toward the back of the house: large, open kitchen in black tiles, green lawn fringed with red haleconia beckoning at the french window along one wall. oh, how could one not be okay here.
on 15 february 2010, we moved out of 90 jalan lim tai see, mistah robin and his fam and his bag and baggage and 55 containers of fragile china, all equally miserable.
since then 90 lts has been broken, battered, and bashed. our beloved home is being transformed into someone else's dream home. i have tried my level best to like our new place. cloddy, large, full of staircases. almost a year has passed since i saw it the very first time and made that call to piklu, my younger brother. "hey, i just saw a place. so many stairs at the entrance, now what? how will you manage?" piklu, born with a funny vascular condition, growing up never to walk in comfort, his left leg weak, swollen with odd bundles of blood, now practically wheelchair bound, calmly said, "how many steps to the entrance?" "10." "I'll manage." earthquakes have ravaged china, pakistan; floods have washed away leh, up, bihar. piklu has died. how do you leave behind a country. how do you leave behind a home. how do you leave behind a brother.
