Wednesday, August 31, 2011
how many people can sit on a tamarind leaf?
it was a time when things were not so money-wise or space-wise comfortable for us. otherwise, things were fine, thanks to the lady boss who ran the show. as in, mother (ah the urge to use the capital).
the stream of guests never thought of petering out, the addas continued unabated, only the location shifted: from large, roomy bungalow in duliajan to part-of-temple-converted-to-residence in calcutta which was also, to complete the atmosphere, drippy-in-the-monsoon. from there to very tiny three room flat in another part of the erstwhile capital of british india.
this is where the tamarind leaf and its wondrous capacity were brought up every time we had largish gatherings. which were, of course, if not a daily occurrence, definitely more frequent than the sightings of mr haley's comet.
how will we fit in so many people, someone would start the fret; then mother, large and immovable on her favourite place on earth, her bed, contentedly wagging big toe, would say:
jodi hao shujon
tentul patay nau-jon
if you are good people
tamarind leaf sits nine
the elliptical ovular, less than 5cm leaflets of the tamarind compound pinnate seemed to get super-leaf power upon encountering "shu" or good "jon"/people. it is difficult to adequately translate the remarkable sanskrit idea "shu" into english. it means good and much more, it is positive, auspicious, the opposite of "ku" and "du", prefixes denoting the negative.
our parties felt cosy, comfortable, relaxed, fun. but never crowded. what's a bit of sweat and sitting on the floor between friends.
this morning, david brooks, writing in the international herald tribune, introduced me to the yiddish word "haimish": a cosy, comfortable, friendly, warm and simple environment or feeling. he was reminded of it while on safari in africa with his family. there, the smaller, less luxurious camps seemed to have haimish, but not the spiffy ones.
surrounded by the the wealth, polish, shine and shallow of singapore, the tinkling laughter at fancy parties, the famous chef menus that leave you half fed, the glass and the granite, the skid and slide to the pinnacle of "perfection", my heart yearns for haimish.
"is money the enemy of haimish?" my brain train asks as it chugs along.
no, don't think so. there was enough of that; and space; and other stuff money can buy before that move to calcutta. there was haimish too. so what was different? what made the tamarind leaf so big and generous?
the crux of it, the mother would have said, is not the leaf, it's the people.
haimish is in the air, when "shu" is in the people.
the stream of guests never thought of petering out, the addas continued unabated, only the location shifted: from large, roomy bungalow in duliajan to part-of-temple-converted-to-residence in calcutta which was also, to complete the atmosphere, drippy-in-the-monsoon. from there to very tiny three room flat in another part of the erstwhile capital of british india.
this is where the tamarind leaf and its wondrous capacity were brought up every time we had largish gatherings. which were, of course, if not a daily occurrence, definitely more frequent than the sightings of mr haley's comet.
how will we fit in so many people, someone would start the fret; then mother, large and immovable on her favourite place on earth, her bed, contentedly wagging big toe, would say:
jodi hao shujon
tentul patay nau-jon
if you are good people
tamarind leaf sits nine
the elliptical ovular, less than 5cm leaflets of the tamarind compound pinnate seemed to get super-leaf power upon encountering "shu" or good "jon"/people. it is difficult to adequately translate the remarkable sanskrit idea "shu" into english. it means good and much more, it is positive, auspicious, the opposite of "ku" and "du", prefixes denoting the negative.
our parties felt cosy, comfortable, relaxed, fun. but never crowded. what's a bit of sweat and sitting on the floor between friends.
this morning, david brooks, writing in the international herald tribune, introduced me to the yiddish word "haimish": a cosy, comfortable, friendly, warm and simple environment or feeling. he was reminded of it while on safari in africa with his family. there, the smaller, less luxurious camps seemed to have haimish, but not the spiffy ones.
surrounded by the the wealth, polish, shine and shallow of singapore, the tinkling laughter at fancy parties, the famous chef menus that leave you half fed, the glass and the granite, the skid and slide to the pinnacle of "perfection", my heart yearns for haimish.
"is money the enemy of haimish?" my brain train asks as it chugs along.
no, don't think so. there was enough of that; and space; and other stuff money can buy before that move to calcutta. there was haimish too. so what was different? what made the tamarind leaf so big and generous?
the crux of it, the mother would have said, is not the leaf, it's the people.
haimish is in the air, when "shu" is in the people.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
again i ramble
so many ways to connect with everything, everyone that we have completely lost the way to connect with ourselves. this morning's little brain train.
maybe it's time to return to the field, find a tree, sit down under its sprawling cool green and just be. time to face we do not know as much as we think we do? facebook won't make us more interesting. religion won't make us more good. money won't make us reach or rich. parenting might just snuff out the child's real fire (this one's the biggie for me when i so wish i had my own tree or hammock by the water and about three thousand years to figure a way out of the mess of "knowledge.")
there are human things about us that are precious, especially given the fact that all humans are finite. the supply side ain't endless. the one i love, the one i adore, the one i hate, they will all end. as will i. can this thought, and actually having a chat with it somewhere not supremely connected give us pause, a meander through the unknown, a delve into something new that's actually timeless, a discovery or rather a rediscovery of the path back to ourselves?
news flash from 33 years ago: remember wordsworth's "ode to intimitations of immortality"?
beautiful poem, while i may not experience the sense of the eternal exactly as w did, nor be too certain about souls and stuff, the idea that we are born with knowledge and gradually proceed to lose it, "our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," that seems to be on the mark. ok it's not exactly what the poet meant perhaps, but that's how i interpret it in my time and reality.
this little away time with the self is getting very necessary for me.
after that comes the brain train, then the itch to taptap, then the reach out for the ultimate friend of the rambler, the iphone sitting on the table by my bed.
(ah the bed the bed the bed, could it be my tree? no wonder, my mother had such faith in it, never left it if she didn't have to. ask anyone, they'll tell ya she was truly wise.)
steve jobs has his tree. his machines show it. mr gates doesn't, his machines prove that.
if reading my words makes you even think of the need for yours, there would be some point to my useless prattle.
maybe it's time to return to the field, find a tree, sit down under its sprawling cool green and just be. time to face we do not know as much as we think we do? facebook won't make us more interesting. religion won't make us more good. money won't make us reach or rich. parenting might just snuff out the child's real fire (this one's the biggie for me when i so wish i had my own tree or hammock by the water and about three thousand years to figure a way out of the mess of "knowledge.")
there are human things about us that are precious, especially given the fact that all humans are finite. the supply side ain't endless. the one i love, the one i adore, the one i hate, they will all end. as will i. can this thought, and actually having a chat with it somewhere not supremely connected give us pause, a meander through the unknown, a delve into something new that's actually timeless, a discovery or rather a rediscovery of the path back to ourselves?
news flash from 33 years ago: remember wordsworth's "ode to intimitations of immortality"?
beautiful poem, while i may not experience the sense of the eternal exactly as w did, nor be too certain about souls and stuff, the idea that we are born with knowledge and gradually proceed to lose it, "our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting," that seems to be on the mark. ok it's not exactly what the poet meant perhaps, but that's how i interpret it in my time and reality.
this little away time with the self is getting very necessary for me.
after that comes the brain train, then the itch to taptap, then the reach out for the ultimate friend of the rambler, the iphone sitting on the table by my bed.
(ah the bed the bed the bed, could it be my tree? no wonder, my mother had such faith in it, never left it if she didn't have to. ask anyone, they'll tell ya she was truly wise.)
steve jobs has his tree. his machines show it. mr gates doesn't, his machines prove that.
if reading my words makes you even think of the need for yours, there would be some point to my useless prattle.
Friday, August 26, 2011
the loss of instinct.
hasn't that been the saddest thing to happen in our times?
steve jobs never lost it and look what that got us. it's 7.45 in the morning. rain outside. the sound and the cool air of it reaches into my room all the way to the far wall where i sit on my bed in a downpour of thoughts, ideas, words, sentences, voices, faces, so much running through my head. oh how i wish i had some place to record it, quickly. before the images vapourize, the thoughts slip away, and the day gets going; hiding, snuffing out, making unimportant what really matters.
i pick up the little black thingie from my cluttered bedside table and touch a picture glowing on it's neat face. i start writing.
could anyone have thought up the iphone without their instinct switched utterly and absolutely on?
i look at the decisions i took that came from instinct. they were all correct. at fiftyone i can see that and so i say it. whether they were about the major things in life or like what to do with this chicken today. everytime i allowed my instinct to flow, it clicked. i just typed "clucked", hyuk.
8.03am. time to turn into a pumpkin and bow to the stupid and the useless. do pumpkins bow? and maybe there's some need in this universe for all the bs.
instinct says, good you wrote this down.
and mr jobs, thank you for knowing what i didn't know i wanted.
just simply didn't.
hasn't that been the saddest thing to happen in our times?
steve jobs never lost it and look what that got us. it's 7.45 in the morning. rain outside. the sound and the cool air of it reaches into my room all the way to the far wall where i sit on my bed in a downpour of thoughts, ideas, words, sentences, voices, faces, so much running through my head. oh how i wish i had some place to record it, quickly. before the images vapourize, the thoughts slip away, and the day gets going; hiding, snuffing out, making unimportant what really matters.
i pick up the little black thingie from my cluttered bedside table and touch a picture glowing on it's neat face. i start writing.
could anyone have thought up the iphone without their instinct switched utterly and absolutely on?
i look at the decisions i took that came from instinct. they were all correct. at fiftyone i can see that and so i say it. whether they were about the major things in life or like what to do with this chicken today. everytime i allowed my instinct to flow, it clicked. i just typed "clucked", hyuk.
8.03am. time to turn into a pumpkin and bow to the stupid and the useless. do pumpkins bow? and maybe there's some need in this universe for all the bs.
instinct says, good you wrote this down.
and mr jobs, thank you for knowing what i didn't know i wanted.
just simply didn't.
