My Sinful Indulgence

On the insistence of my younger son, I watched 'Cloud Atlas'. Not that I didn't want to watch the movie, but  I was just hard pressed on time and felt that this one thing can certainly wait. But since he was to go back to his hostel, he insisted that I watch it with him before leaving for my trip to Delhi. It was like watching all the beliefs I have grown up with, through the eyes of Hollywood. My gut reaction insisted, that we should be the one's making highly sophisticated films on this subject and not just twidling our thumbs and being mere spectators to the philosophies our land is seeped with. But as I write this, sitting at the airport my head involuntarily turns to the TV monitor and I cringe at the sight of the blood spurting out of the mouth of the goon as John Abraham lands a punch on his stomach. This is just the trailer filling in the break of the more disgusting Ramgopal Verma Ki Aag with senseless visuals. What a waste of his talent and skills by the director !

Why? Why? Why... are we stuck in the cliched. In fact our old movies were more progressive than what is being churned out at present. My constant introspection does not lead me to any answers, so maybe the  people and the land has to live its karma and grow into something consequential only in due course of time.

I started writing this blog while I was at the airport and by the time I got back to writing this paragraph, I have already landed in Delhi and caught up with my friends in Faridabad. Great sessions of catching up interspersed with breaks of great meals. I would certainly like to mention here the scrumptious home cooked meal I had at my friends place prepared by his spouse. At home while I am made to believe that I am the best cook in the world, meals like the one I had, give me a complex. And I also should not forget mentioning the jalebis and gulabjamuns I have relished.

In the past 23 years or so  while I have become a true Mumbaiker, I still yearn for the gulabjamuns, jalebis and chole bhature's of this land. Last two days for three of my meals I have eaten Chole.....taking into consideration that I take only two meals in a day.....that is a little too much of Choles. For those who are wondering what this word means, it is an Indian preparation of chickpeas. So back to my having it in overdose!! But I am not complaining. I can still  eat more of them. With samosas and tikkis too. They don't make these things like this back in Mumbai. It's the same that they don't make Pao bhaji Mumbaiya style in Delhi. I cringe everytime I eat Pao Bhaji here. I want to shout at the top of my voice or better so have a Anna Hazare kind of morcha and tell people that this is not even close to the pao bhaji I get back in Mumbai. What we get in Delhi is a highly cinnamonised version and the regular sweet buns  replace the oh so delicately delicious pao's. I can estimate the intensity of the shock an old Parsi bakery guy can go through if he sees what is being passed off as the staple mumbaiya pao.

At times when I am shuttling between Delhi and Mumbai, I wonder if anyone can sympathise with the pull I feel between the two places. Or for that reason I can put my Bengal too in the bag of mixed parentage and upbringing. A transferable job held by my dad and then finally one day my karmas taking me to settle down in  Mumbai, exposed me to people from various cultures and religions. This has made me incorporate many things from different parts of the world into my life. I can not take sides or do justice to any particular state, or country, because for me we are all human beings with a set of good and bad qualities. That leaves me completely at a loss of reactions when I see people fighting so fiercely for their cultures, sticking to their beliefs. I personally feel that instead of making mundane laws, the bureaucracy of India should make a law  making it compulsory for people to move out of their birthplace and spend some years of their lives in different parts of the country.  Maybe they can pick up the regions they want to experience. And then the process of living life with people of different cultural ethnicities certainly will open up the minds of the citizens and make people more adjusting to the beliefs of other people. Half of our lives are spent in trying to make people change their beliefs because we all are driven by the egoistical belief that we know the best. Acceptance of our friends, relatives and loved ones just the way they are, is still a leaf in the pages of Bhagvad Gita and other inumerable books with preachings of various spiritual souls in the land of spirituality.... Don't you think so?

While you introspect let me just go and enjoy some tikkis because back in Mumbai, ragda patties though similar in looks do not taste  like tikkis Delhi people make.....

The Seeking Heart

The land of Whirling Dervishes and Rumi and Shams Tabrizi..... that is what Turkey is for me today. It took me a trip to the place to actually feel the ethnicity of the country. 

Sometimes a bit of suspense can unfold into something very exciting and that is exactly what happened with me in the past week. I hung on to the invite by a dear friend of mine, to join her on a trip to Istanbul. I could make out that it was to be a very non touristy trip. I grabbed the opportunity just to get away from the drab local news of Mumbai. The ever increasing taxi and auto fares....the onset of the unbearable October heat....and the ho hum about Arvind Kejriwal and his various expose staring at me from the local newspaper every morning.  Anything would have been good but unknowingly, a dream vacation was falling into my lap.

Istiklal Avenue

Inside the Blue Mosque

The thunderous rolling down of the trams on Istiklal Avenue and Divan Yolu, the chaos of the Grand Bazaar and the magnificence of the blue mosque will always stay fresh in my memories. The fact that I went to Topkapi palace and didn't enter the gates. Yes, I actually did that. A piece of history was there right in front of me and I decided not to enrich myself. That is so unlike me!  Deep inside my heart I felt, "will do it the next time at leisure".

Grand Bazaar

Sharing the same roof with the hippies of 60's

Walking down Divan Yolu

On recollecting now, that I was under the same roof as the followers of hippie culture of the 60's at the Pudding Shop, and was walking on Divan Yolu, a road laid down by Constantine the great somewhere in 300 AD, gives me a high without a drop of the local Raki going down my throat. The coming together of people from different parts of the world under one roof at Konya and the opportunity of understanding not only Sufism and teachings of Rumi through their eyes but also looking at the richness of my own country through their seeking hearts, leaves me fulfilled.

View across the Bosphorous from the Asian side

I have to go back to Istanbul, to visit places around it, to enjoy a sumptuous meal of fish by the Bosphorous, to shop in loads at Istiklal Avenue, to eat Baklava, to see the whirling dervishes and to catch up with a couple of friends I have made there in so less a time. The list is endless. I want to have Simit with Cheese, walk down the cobbled streets or sit at any of the beautifully landscaped parks and do nothing. It was exactly the way I had always wanted to experience the flavour of a country.  Be on the roads, trying to figure out where to go with the help of maps.....getting the name of  the bus stop we wanted to go to absolutely wrong, but still land up at the right place. Trying to communicate with people on the streets without a common language and still manage to explain ourselves and understand what they wanted to say in their language. Everything from the weather, the ambiance,  the helpful people of the country and the stimulating discussions on the Sufism and its message of peace to the world and the vast  history of the country has done wonders to my heart. 

Turkish Coffee served with style

One more time someday in the near future I wish to share a cup of Turkish coffee with my dear friend sitting in the same restaurant, the name of which we didn't bother to find out. And the beautiful trip can again be wound up with one more coffee cup reading for me. The only difficult decision I have to make till then is whether I stay on the Asian side or the European side of Istanbul. 

MEMORIES

I had to write today, to look back at those beautiful memories I cherish of my brother, to look back at all those fights I had with him and to just try to reach out my hand into thin air and try to feel his physical presence. The last part, my heart knows, is absolutely impossible because when people move on to their onward journey from Earth, they never return back......

Fourteen years ago on this very day, early in the morning I was staring at his motionless body, waiting for him to jump up and start behaving like himself. He didn't.... and after all the rituals had been taken care of, I got to hold his ashes in a small urn and I kept on thinking all the way to Haridwar that, "Is that it?" And as I mulled over the incomprehensible secrets of life and death, somewhere inside me my reflexes told me not to look back AT ALL......as looking back meant breaking down and that would have been a hindrance to the tasks he had left behind for me......I had to keep running his company as long as I could, and had to take care of his young sons, and to try and heal his mother...our mother....who must have been absolutely shattered after losing a part of her, but refused to show her grief to anyone.

But how long can I hold myself back.....as I started treading towards the ensuing dawn of my life, I one day just turned back and looked... and there, I could see myself riding with him on his bicycle, being brought back from school after waiting for a harrowing one hour outside the school gates, while everyone else had left. I was dying to reach home and complain to my mother and satisfy myself with the scoldings being bombarded at him.

My ears were ringing with his voice singing all the great melodies of Kishore Kumar, while I was sitting there on the bar of his bicycle. Till today many times I listen to Kishore Kumar songs to feel my brothers voice kissing my ears. His was a voice exact copy of the legendary singer and very few people know that he was a trained classical singer.

I can hear him recollecting the mishaps he had had with me because as an infant being 11 years younger to him I was absolutely at his mercy. He would tell me how, inspite of being a frail clumsy boy, he would love carrying me around in his arms and one day just dropped me into a gutter full of..........well you can guess what gutters are full of!!!! I would go urghhhh.....and he would enjoy my displeasure with his full throated laughter.

He was the first boy to pull at my long plait and though it hurt me, he always enjoyed it. Maybe that is why in the past years I have preferred to have short hair, because there is no one around to pull at the plait anymore. We fought like animals, like many other siblings, but the strange part is that I always won the fights instead of being so much younger and smaller than him. He got me into the best school of Chandigarh, after dad thrust the responsibility on him.  And I enjoyed him coming to pick me up from school, because my friends found him handsome...they never said it, but I could see it in their eyes.

Oh for those long sessions of playing cricket...and hockey and football. I always preferred playing cricket though...and sticking around with him wherever he went. He would get tired of me at times. Which young teenaged boy wouldn't, with his sister, sticking around him like a sore thumb, when all he wanted to do was enjoy with his friends and flirt with the girls on the street. That too a sister who would spurt out all what he did to mom and dad, the moment we returned home. Wish I had the decency of keeping his secrets.

This place is too less to go on talking about what we shared and what all we disagreed upon. But still after so many years, I am happy I made the attempt to refresh his memories and I am sure he is smiling up there. I wish he could give me his bear hug and pull at my plait once again....oops! I forgot I don't have it anymore.

But today I want him to  be at peace wherever he is and to be in the best of his spirits, no matter if he is in any physical form or is a divine soul. And as I look at his two young sons and try to find him in them....I wish to get one more chance to tie Rakhi to him and look forward to him reminding me to touch his feet, because he was older to me and we happened to be Bengalis. The only difference being, that this time I would throw myself at his feet to pay obeisance to all that he has done for me and to hide those tears rolling down to cry over the fact that his was a life of a genius cut short by the game of destiny. And more so a life today not remebered by many which otherwise,  had he been alive, would have attracted loads of appreciation because he was on his way to reaching out for the skies.......