It’s not easy. In fact, it can be quite frightening. For months I have been saying I want to do it, but now that I finally have, I am feeling rather woffly and unsure about having done it. This does not mean I am going to undo it, not even that there is any remote possibility that I am considering undoing it, but I cannot help being a little wobbly, almost like a downy little kitten taking its first tentative steps away from its mother’s warmth.
Actually, when you just read that wonderful piece of verbiage, you will find that it says very little except that I have just done something I am not sure I should have done. But I have done it anyway and will not be undoing it. Ergo, it needs to be considered to be irretrievably done and not undoable, not under any circumstances.
ANY? Well….maybe there is a tiny circumstance or two I would undo it under, perhaps if I was given the freedom to do what I am planning to do now that I have done the thing that I cannot undo. But since that is never going to be possible, I need to just grit my teeth and get on with the thing that I have been wanting to do, once I had the freedom to do it, that is, which is the whole reason for doing what I have done that I cannot, will not undo.
Whew.
I got the same feeling about two years ago, when I had my hair done. I had it cut short and, much to my own consternation, coloured it a wonderfully deep and dangerous purple. It was lovely. I was pampered and preened and primped and polished for hours and hours by my hair-expert and her crew, and I sat there falling gently asleep even as successions of nasty-smelling stuff were slathered all over my scalp, washed off and replaced with more. At the end of it, strangely exhausted, I tottered out of the salon, feeling more fragile than I had any right to be, but also feeling wonderful, with hair that glowed an almost iridescent violet in the direct sunlight. That this colour did not last was a given that I should have taken but didn’t remember to. I slowly went from deep purple to cherry scarlet to a cheap-bleached orange. And then, for the first ever time in my life, actually coloured by hair to go back to my natural, normal dark black.
Well, the story is just an analogy. My hair does not come into my undoable decision at all, except that I may now have the time to get it done again, though not the same kind of colour-adventure. You see, what I have done, which I am nervous about but will not undo, is to quit. Yes, you read right. QUIT. My Job. I gave in my one-line resignation letter a couple of weeks ago and have another couple of weeks to go before I walk out of here in, I hope, a little glory, if not an entire blaze of it. Where I am going to and what I am going to do remain between me and my mind (and, of course, Father and Small Cat if she has been listening in), but I have all my fingers and toes crossed that I will do it, and do it in a way that makes me and mine proud to be me and mine.
I will miss this place, especially the irascible boss and the people I work with, never mind their idiosyncracies and my own. But life is all about moving on finding new treasures, learning new routes and enjoying new adventures. This is my turn to do just that….
Monday, June 30, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
Brown and beautiful
I was in a store in South Mumbai this morning that almost epitomised heaven for me. ‘Almost’, because I was fast developing a headache due to a combination of stress, not enough sleep (Small Cat has decided to hold early morning sessions of high opera just to liven up the proceedings when she is awake and the rest of the house is not) and an unexpected in weather from very hot and muggy to cool and wet to very hot and muggy again this morning. That notwithstanding, I was in a place that could conceivably called heaven, even for those who do not have the same tastes as I do.
The place is called Theobroma and it is located at the end of Colaba Causeway, once one of the most popular shopping destinations in the city. It stretches from Regal Cinema on one end, to Kailash Parbat on the other and runs parallel to the waterline that you can walk along in front (or behind, since it is said that the building is actually the wrong way around) of the Taj Mahal hotel. I had heard about it a while before I actually found it on my personal map, and am glad it took that long, since it would have meant a few more inches to that rapidly expanding waistline rather before I was ready for it to happen.
This morning I stopped the car right outside and hopped in to the store. It isn’t very big, but it fills your head instantly with smells and sights that are enough to delight any food-lovers heart. And a few people who do not like eating (poor souls) would be delighted too, since there was enough in there to make anyone happy. It is as if you run into a physical wall of sweet and savoury, with the tang of lemon, the sharpness of cinnamon, the richness of cream and the bite of meat luring you from every side. Trays along one wall offer up varied delights – chocolate in the form of croissants, brownies, cookies and Danish; puffs and pasties stuffed with chicken, mutton, an occasional veggie; rolls groaning with the weight of mayonnaise-gooey salad and breadsticks of various shapes, sizes and flavours. A mirror lines one wall, where those more involved with their hairdos or figures can take a good look, and there are enough people at the small tables to watch them rather than the goodies.
I stood there for a moment, breathing heavily. Then I walked slowly past all the deliciousnesses on display and cogitated, albeit only briefly, and started selecting what I wanted. I took brownies, deeply chocolate and studded with chunks of the semi-sweet brown stuff, I chose pasties for a friend who craved them, I chose plain chocolate for Father, just because he was often half-sweet-half-not and I chose a cake that was so dense and rich that it made me feel vaguely bilious just looking at it. And I chatted briefly with the lady in charge as she had it all packed up, billed and paid for.
I am in a strange way glad that I am not in that part of the city too often. Apart from the sudden wicked need to get to eat more than is my wont, I also tend to have eyes that are bigger than my stomach, if you know what I mean – I buy much more than we can really go through before we get sick of it all. And then, of course, there is my favourite pair of blue jeans that refuse to stretch…
The place is called Theobroma and it is located at the end of Colaba Causeway, once one of the most popular shopping destinations in the city. It stretches from Regal Cinema on one end, to Kailash Parbat on the other and runs parallel to the waterline that you can walk along in front (or behind, since it is said that the building is actually the wrong way around) of the Taj Mahal hotel. I had heard about it a while before I actually found it on my personal map, and am glad it took that long, since it would have meant a few more inches to that rapidly expanding waistline rather before I was ready for it to happen.
This morning I stopped the car right outside and hopped in to the store. It isn’t very big, but it fills your head instantly with smells and sights that are enough to delight any food-lovers heart. And a few people who do not like eating (poor souls) would be delighted too, since there was enough in there to make anyone happy. It is as if you run into a physical wall of sweet and savoury, with the tang of lemon, the sharpness of cinnamon, the richness of cream and the bite of meat luring you from every side. Trays along one wall offer up varied delights – chocolate in the form of croissants, brownies, cookies and Danish; puffs and pasties stuffed with chicken, mutton, an occasional veggie; rolls groaning with the weight of mayonnaise-gooey salad and breadsticks of various shapes, sizes and flavours. A mirror lines one wall, where those more involved with their hairdos or figures can take a good look, and there are enough people at the small tables to watch them rather than the goodies.
I stood there for a moment, breathing heavily. Then I walked slowly past all the deliciousnesses on display and cogitated, albeit only briefly, and started selecting what I wanted. I took brownies, deeply chocolate and studded with chunks of the semi-sweet brown stuff, I chose pasties for a friend who craved them, I chose plain chocolate for Father, just because he was often half-sweet-half-not and I chose a cake that was so dense and rich that it made me feel vaguely bilious just looking at it. And I chatted briefly with the lady in charge as she had it all packed up, billed and paid for.
I am in a strange way glad that I am not in that part of the city too often. Apart from the sudden wicked need to get to eat more than is my wont, I also tend to have eyes that are bigger than my stomach, if you know what I mean – I buy much more than we can really go through before we get sick of it all. And then, of course, there is my favourite pair of blue jeans that refuse to stretch…
Monday, June 09, 2008
Rain days
Mumbai Municipal Commissioner Jairaj Pathak seems to have a brilliant mathematical mind. He also has his facts and figures – as local parlance so pithily puts it – at his fingertips. The last three days has given Mumbai 10 per cent of the season’s average rainfall which, according to Pathak’s numerical wisdom, means that 10 per cent of the city’s monsoon worries are over. Now all we need to worry about is the remaining 90 per cent.
But that 90 per cent is occupying about 100 per cent of the Mumbaikar’s mind these days. After all, one day of rain threw Mumbai’s various mechanisms out of gear. Trains were stalled, roads were flooded, walls collapsed and short circuits abounded. To cap the list of disasters, in a brilliant stroke of irony the Bombay Municipal Corporation’s heritage office building in South Mumbai had leakage and flooding problems, on the sixth floor that too, where accumulated files had to be covered with plastic to avoid data being damaged by water dripping in. The same plastic that shelters pavement dwellers and road-crews alike. Through the weekend, at each high tide, the areas of the city prone to flooding became mini-lakes as the rain fell persistently. Workmen stood in often-thigh-deep water, trying to pump away the flood and clear the choked gutters of the rubbish that prevented efficient drainage. The emergency clean-up services worked, but they should not have been needed at all.
Who is to accept the blame for what happened? The Municipal Commissioner insisted that promises have been kept – the city’s sewers have been cleared of muck, the roads repaired, potholes filled, railway tracks de-silted and the storm water drains cleaned and refurbished. The flooding, he said, is because of the basic structure of Mumbai’s drainage system – it is too old and not extensive enough to cope with a population that has increased so-many-fold since it was originally built. As a result, when the tide comes in, water cannot drain out and collects, causing traffic disruptions, hampering pedestrian movement and resulting, in a few unfortunate cases, in death. An excuse we hear every year.
The roads are being repaired, some relaid, but the rains came two days before schedule, disrupting progress, he reported. But he could not explain why, in so many instances, digging up road surfaces to concretise whole stretches of major arteries began just before the rain did. He also – albeit in passing, perhaps knowing that nothing will come of it - blamed the civic sense of the local people: accumulated garbage accounts for a great deal of the waterlogging, on roads and railway lines.
But the plain truth is that what has happened over just two days of rain is frightening if it is a prelude to a three-month-long monsoon. How much more damage will a sustained and much heavier downpour produce? And, even with the paranoia of fairly recent memory to prevent a recurrence of July 26th, 2005, can Mumbai manage to survive another such disaster? With such hard-working and responsible civic officials at the helm and with an urban disaster management system as the one Mumbai now has so firmly in place, it seems highly unlikely.
But that 90 per cent is occupying about 100 per cent of the Mumbaikar’s mind these days. After all, one day of rain threw Mumbai’s various mechanisms out of gear. Trains were stalled, roads were flooded, walls collapsed and short circuits abounded. To cap the list of disasters, in a brilliant stroke of irony the Bombay Municipal Corporation’s heritage office building in South Mumbai had leakage and flooding problems, on the sixth floor that too, where accumulated files had to be covered with plastic to avoid data being damaged by water dripping in. The same plastic that shelters pavement dwellers and road-crews alike. Through the weekend, at each high tide, the areas of the city prone to flooding became mini-lakes as the rain fell persistently. Workmen stood in often-thigh-deep water, trying to pump away the flood and clear the choked gutters of the rubbish that prevented efficient drainage. The emergency clean-up services worked, but they should not have been needed at all.
Who is to accept the blame for what happened? The Municipal Commissioner insisted that promises have been kept – the city’s sewers have been cleared of muck, the roads repaired, potholes filled, railway tracks de-silted and the storm water drains cleaned and refurbished. The flooding, he said, is because of the basic structure of Mumbai’s drainage system – it is too old and not extensive enough to cope with a population that has increased so-many-fold since it was originally built. As a result, when the tide comes in, water cannot drain out and collects, causing traffic disruptions, hampering pedestrian movement and resulting, in a few unfortunate cases, in death. An excuse we hear every year.
The roads are being repaired, some relaid, but the rains came two days before schedule, disrupting progress, he reported. But he could not explain why, in so many instances, digging up road surfaces to concretise whole stretches of major arteries began just before the rain did. He also – albeit in passing, perhaps knowing that nothing will come of it - blamed the civic sense of the local people: accumulated garbage accounts for a great deal of the waterlogging, on roads and railway lines.
But the plain truth is that what has happened over just two days of rain is frightening if it is a prelude to a three-month-long monsoon. How much more damage will a sustained and much heavier downpour produce? And, even with the paranoia of fairly recent memory to prevent a recurrence of July 26th, 2005, can Mumbai manage to survive another such disaster? With such hard-working and responsible civic officials at the helm and with an urban disaster management system as the one Mumbai now has so firmly in place, it seems highly unlikely.
Don’t be a damp squib
Never mind what the Met Office may say about it, but the weather has changed suddenly from hot, sweaty and irritating to cool, damp and invigorating. The weather-people can call it a depression if they want to, but most of us are thrilled at finally feeling – and how! – the end of the mugginess that bogged us all down. But that euphoria rarely lasts. The joy that the first rains bring is soon dampened, literally, the rain seems endless, you long for sunshine and cabin fever wreaks deadly havoc on relationships, however close.
Now that is the problem. The monsoon has a nasty habit of making more than just clothes and floors and hair feel soggy and sticky. Romance, too, seems to be stuck, in some soggy rut, where everything is boring and mired in clouds of gloom and everything seems so much worse than it actually is. Worse still, you start fighting with your significant other for nothing, just because you are not able to go out and play, shop, eat, watch a film…whatever makes your cookie crumble. You want to eat popcorn, but it goes limp by the time it has finished popping. You want to sit on the windowsill and feed the birds, but they are all sheltering under some eave somewhere, out of the rain. You want to drive down to the mall to buy new socks, but the car is standing in four inches of water that you do not want to wade through to get in. And it’s all his fault…or hers.
But come the monsoon, when real rain pours down in thick sheets, when all you can see outside is water, when not a fly or a crow (think the Tamil proverb) is stirring, romance should be. There is love in snuggling on the couch eating hot onion pakoras, sipping tea, humming along with Raj and Nargis as they croon under an umbrella. There is romance in being warm and dry inside the house while people struggle to get to wherever they are going by train, by bus, by flooded road. There is passion in the knowledge that you really do not need to get your feet wet and your hair frizzed while you wait for the next clear patch before you dash to the store to buy milk.
There is indeed romance in the rain. So stop being a damp squib and grouching about the season of sogginess!
Now that is the problem. The monsoon has a nasty habit of making more than just clothes and floors and hair feel soggy and sticky. Romance, too, seems to be stuck, in some soggy rut, where everything is boring and mired in clouds of gloom and everything seems so much worse than it actually is. Worse still, you start fighting with your significant other for nothing, just because you are not able to go out and play, shop, eat, watch a film…whatever makes your cookie crumble. You want to eat popcorn, but it goes limp by the time it has finished popping. You want to sit on the windowsill and feed the birds, but they are all sheltering under some eave somewhere, out of the rain. You want to drive down to the mall to buy new socks, but the car is standing in four inches of water that you do not want to wade through to get in. And it’s all his fault…or hers.
But come the monsoon, when real rain pours down in thick sheets, when all you can see outside is water, when not a fly or a crow (think the Tamil proverb) is stirring, romance should be. There is love in snuggling on the couch eating hot onion pakoras, sipping tea, humming along with Raj and Nargis as they croon under an umbrella. There is romance in being warm and dry inside the house while people struggle to get to wherever they are going by train, by bus, by flooded road. There is passion in the knowledge that you really do not need to get your feet wet and your hair frizzed while you wait for the next clear patch before you dash to the store to buy milk.
There is indeed romance in the rain. So stop being a damp squib and grouching about the season of sogginess!
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
Waiting for the unexpected
(I did this for the arts page of the paper. It was a fun experience...)
“A story becomes a story when its end is known,” Martine Franck once said. Her own story has been one of adventure, excitement, discovery. Born in Antwerp, she grew up in the United States and Britain before heading to Europe – to study art history first at the University of Madrid and then at the Louvre School in Paris. She started working for Time-Life in Paris in 1963 and met her future husband, Henri Cartier-Bresson, while on a fashion shoot in 1966. When the Theatre du Soleil was established in 1964 by director Ariane Mnouchkine, Franck focused her lens on its stage and has photographed every production there.
But its not all glamour, there’s a gritty side too. She has been involved with humanitarian reportage and was part of Vu and Viva (as a founder) photo-agencies, and has worked with Magnum for many years now. As Franck says, “A photo-agency is stimulating. It keeps you on your toes, inspires you to follow your colleagues’ work.” Reportage can be soul-sapping, exhausting, even painful. “I personally have never been in such a situation, but there have been times where I have censored myself and refused to take the photograph. There are no fixed rules. Each photographer reacts in his or her own way according to their feelings or principles.”
Apart from photography and administration of this continuing interest, she does social and charity work for the Little Brothers of the Poor, a non-governmental organisation which cares for the elderly and outcasts of society. She has also authored a number of books.
Today photography is sometimes as much about creating an image as it is about capturing a moment on camera. Digital technology has made it easy to ‘cheat’, allowing manipulations, but “This depends very much on the individual photographer; I personally do not manipulate my photographs,” Franck clarifies. ‘A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either, it's more of a fleeting, subjective impression’, she has said, and explains that “A photograph is only a split second of ‘reality’. A person may look very happy in an image and yet be in a tragic situation and vice versa - that is what I mean about not it necessarily being the truth.”
Once a painfully shy person, she has used her camera as a screen. “But I no longer hide behind my camera,” Franck smiles. She prefers to speak with it, though, “I hope that I communicate with my images, but that is for the viewer to say, not me.” And what is she trying to say? “I basically photograph what I like or who I like and admire. The important thing for me is to put myself in the other person’s shoes and try and understand or feel what they are feeling.”
Though Franck will not be in India with her work this time, “I have been many times to India and hope to come back again next year.” She says, “I very much like the work of Dayanita Singh and Raghu Rai, but I know there are so many whose work I have not yet seen.”
She has spoken of ‘transgressions’ and explains that “Transgressions for me are a matter of going a little further than what reason tells you to do - either getting closer, being insistent in meeting someone, sometimes being ‘impolite’, pushing your way forward, stepping on people’s toes…” all that today is essential to being a paparazzi, the least liked species of photographer. And, as Franck says, “All these things I have done.” After all, being true to the lens and always in search of that perfect picture is what the craft is all about. “What I most like about photography is the moment that you can't anticipate; you have to be constantly watching for it, ready to welcome the unexpected."
Martine Franck – Photographs, Art Musings Gallery, Colaba, May 3 to June 21
Running from the rain
(I wrote this for the paper I work with. I kinda liked it. Hence it finds its way here....)
I feel a bit like Mrs Macbeth, even though the weather is making me look a little more like one of the witches on that blasted heath that Shakespeare spoke of. My hair is frizzing beyond even the control of the stern ministrations of my hairdresser and the kitchen towels are not drying even after being double-spun in the machine. It is damp – nay, moist – within and without and the atmosphere hangs heavy in my very existence.
There’s something in the air tonight, oh, Lord! And that something is not just Phil Collins’ squeaky-smoky voice, but the monsoon. Like the good Mumbaikar that I am, I wait not-too-patiently and watch the sky from my bedroom window, but there has not been any tangible sign of that cloud that people chase from its first appearance off the Kerala coast to its descent over the mountains of the northeast. Nary a raindrop in sight, not in my sights, at least. When I am lying in my bed, spreadeagled to catch every waft of the coolth from the airconditioner, I hear an occasional drop bouncing off the chhajja and spring up to peer through the olive green sheers…nope, that is just the AC from upstairs dripping.
I am not really sure why I want the rains to arrive. Maybe it is because, with my usual stickler-ish-ness for keeping to schedule, it is supposed to, therefore it must. Maybe at some deeply existential level I am being my vaguely eco-aware self and realise that to get the crops growing and keep the farmers from dying the rain is essential. Maybe it is all a matter of that cycle of life thing that those animal folks sang of. Or maybe it is just that the season of hot and more hot is getting really boring and I need change.
Frankly, I am not a rain person. I hate the smell of sheets not drying and the green stuff that grows on slippers that got damp in a puddle. I hate the feel of dankness in the hot air and the stickiness of floors that never dry. The time that my small car actually floated a couple of inches off the road in many feet of dreadfully dirty water – that happened last year – is something that will always haunt me. It was not the fact that we were pretending to be a boat, but the fact that not having solid ground under me aggravated my vertigo and actually made me, who hates getting her feet dirty, long to splash in a few puddles.
For now, I do not have too much to worry about. The potholes are being filled, with promises if not with asphalt, the roads are being concretised – or at least dug up for the process – and my new car has been rust-proofed and Teflon-coated to minimise damage. In my world, things are all set for the onslaught of the monsoon. All I need is that first downpour. And while I wait for Nature to do its thing, I watch the drip from the airconditioning system above my desk in the office.
I feel a bit like Mrs Macbeth, even though the weather is making me look a little more like one of the witches on that blasted heath that Shakespeare spoke of. My hair is frizzing beyond even the control of the stern ministrations of my hairdresser and the kitchen towels are not drying even after being double-spun in the machine. It is damp – nay, moist – within and without and the atmosphere hangs heavy in my very existence.
There’s something in the air tonight, oh, Lord! And that something is not just Phil Collins’ squeaky-smoky voice, but the monsoon. Like the good Mumbaikar that I am, I wait not-too-patiently and watch the sky from my bedroom window, but there has not been any tangible sign of that cloud that people chase from its first appearance off the Kerala coast to its descent over the mountains of the northeast. Nary a raindrop in sight, not in my sights, at least. When I am lying in my bed, spreadeagled to catch every waft of the coolth from the airconditioner, I hear an occasional drop bouncing off the chhajja and spring up to peer through the olive green sheers…nope, that is just the AC from upstairs dripping.
I am not really sure why I want the rains to arrive. Maybe it is because, with my usual stickler-ish-ness for keeping to schedule, it is supposed to, therefore it must. Maybe at some deeply existential level I am being my vaguely eco-aware self and realise that to get the crops growing and keep the farmers from dying the rain is essential. Maybe it is all a matter of that cycle of life thing that those animal folks sang of. Or maybe it is just that the season of hot and more hot is getting really boring and I need change.
Frankly, I am not a rain person. I hate the smell of sheets not drying and the green stuff that grows on slippers that got damp in a puddle. I hate the feel of dankness in the hot air and the stickiness of floors that never dry. The time that my small car actually floated a couple of inches off the road in many feet of dreadfully dirty water – that happened last year – is something that will always haunt me. It was not the fact that we were pretending to be a boat, but the fact that not having solid ground under me aggravated my vertigo and actually made me, who hates getting her feet dirty, long to splash in a few puddles.
For now, I do not have too much to worry about. The potholes are being filled, with promises if not with asphalt, the roads are being concretised – or at least dug up for the process – and my new car has been rust-proofed and Teflon-coated to minimise damage. In my world, things are all set for the onslaught of the monsoon. All I need is that first downpour. And while I wait for Nature to do its thing, I watch the drip from the airconditioning system above my desk in the office.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)