Remember the time...

I have been thinking about this one for a while now. I had all my phrases planned, my pauses calculated. And then it struck me that that would be as hypocritical as all the hype that I profess to hate. So instead of writing about whatever happened a year ago and how it is being dealt with now, I decided instead to give thanks. And this is what I must say a big thank you for...

For being alive and well. I am, I hope to stay that way. Those who are really important to me are still with me, and I hope they stay that way too. I pray for nothing these days, but I hope I can keep those I have with me, those I need, in physical reality, alive, well, whole and happy, for a long time to come. Since my wishes tend to be in five-year cycles, at least five years is a good start. Aim for that, hope for a lot more. Hey, you up there, the power that is, are you listening?

For being fed and clothed and housed. There are so many who are struggling with the everyday smallnesses of living. So far, I have managed never to be in that situation, thanks to those who stand by me and thanks to my own destiny and my own strengths. I hope that it stays that way for ever.

For being happy. I am a happy person in essence. I like seeing the good in people, in things, in times, in situations. Sometimes that becomes impossible and I go from being happy to being not at all happy. Which in itself makes me not at all happy. So I hope to stay happy. I hope that there will always be laughter and joy and that spirit in me that shows me good over bad, that shows me the way to find that goodness no matter what I am living through.

For being me. I like who I am, after a long time of not knowing who that "I" is. I thank everyone who has made me ME, from my parents to my life, to the power that is to my circumstances, to all the decisions I have ever made, good or bad. And, at the risk of sounding like an endless speech I could make at the Oscars, I hope there is more of the good stuff and very little of the bad stuff to come in the rest of my life.

It is Thanksgiving in some parts of the world. I give thanks for it all...

Body language

I was at a dance performance at the National Centre for Performing Arts last night. It was a social event as much as it was an artistic one, with lots of hugging and kissing and high-pitchedly happy greetings breaking the silence of the vast and usually serene lobby of the auditorium. It had been a long time since we had been there to watch a show and it felt wonderfully familiar even as my feet protested the conjunction of deeply plush carpet and four inch stiletto heels with every step. We were, as almost always, very early, and sat on a studded leather seat watching the world cruise gently past…until the frenzy began.

The show was Sharira, the last created by Chandralekha, she of the flowing silver hair and huge bindi, darkly kolhed eyes and black sari. I had seen only a couple of works by her – the iconic Leelavati being my absolute favourite – and was looking forward to this one. I knew it would probably be mysterious in theme and fabulous in physicality and was interested to know more about a production that had come so long after the ones that I had watched, not wholly understood, but was fascinated by. Also, perhaps the best part, I did not have to watch it to write about it or its creator or, in fact, anything at all. And it was indeed worth the drive into town and the change out of comfortable home-wear pajamas into a more visually-appealing sari, complete with makeup, jewellery and, of course, the heels.

The show began almost on time, with some talking – by the deceptively slim lady who seemed to be part of the NCPA, Pinakin Patel, the small and seemingly mercurial “sponsor”, a well known architect formerly based in Mumbai and Dashrath Patel, the artist (for lack of any other single word to describe his craft which includes photography, painting, sculpture…) in whose honour the event was being staged. A very old man held up by a cane and a couple of devoted arms, he spoke of memories and experiences, people and times that most of us watching and listening would want to hear more of but identify with perhaps very little. There was a blithe spirit in the gentleman, a briskness that belied his years and his weaknesses. He was funny and touching, sharp and wandering, all at the same time. Why don’t they let him be, I wondered, even as I applauded his demands for attention with his very being and his small bites of wit.

The performance had its own vocabulary, only some of which made sense to me. There were just two ‘dancers’, Tishani Doshi and Sabu John, woman and man, each playing a part as an individual even as they coordinated perfectly in their dialogue on stage. As with all of Chandralekha’s creations, the bodies were perfectly trained, honed, controlled, each movement precise and slow, speaking along the arc from start to finish. This was a virtuoso ‘dance’ that seemed to bring in the process of creation, of cosmic power, of the principle that unites man and woman even as it differentiates between the two. There was a power struggle on even as each person displayed a strength and allowed a domination.

What it was all about, what was being said, I could not explain, since I did not understand, but the overall communication between the performers and me was that it was the various forms of power and interaction, creativity and awareness, with sensuality and sexuality, each playing off the other and thereby giving both a new level of existence. Was there a story being told? Not obviously, no. Was there a theme? Not that I could figure. Was there a meaning? It escaped me. But there was a beauty, a grace, a fabulous control and an almost-otherworldly power – the only way I can describe it – that came off that couple doing slow and strong movements of body and, presumably, mind, on the stage.

Sharira was, for me, a fresh awareness. A knowledge that there was a life outside my small world, a life that I was once part of and consciously retreated from. And it became a tiny seed of wanting, to regain at least a little of that previous self that I knew made me more complete. This time, with my rules.

The Dogs of Wall

(This was published today in TOI's new Crest edition. Written in almost 20 minutes, perhaps less...!)

Many years ago, in a time that feels now like it was another life, we lived in Germany. It was West Germany then, a clearly distinguished part of the world very separate in almost every way from the other Germany, the place known as ‘East’. Between the two was a vast realm where nightmare ruled and red-eyed dogs patrolled on leashes held tight by hard-eyed soldiers, where life was a matter of belonging to the place from where escape was vital or to where escape had to be made. In our small village, high in the hills and nestled into the Black Forest, a small suburb of Heidelberg, life was sunny, the bread was fresh and crusty, the bank manager was amiable and the walk to school wound through the woods where the biggest danger may have been the rare wild boar or wolf, of which more was heard than seen.

I was very young then, my memories of that time and place more impressions than actual data. I had heard vaguely of the great divide between east and west, but believed it to be something that happened to someone else, me and mine undisturbed by its reality. And then we traveled across that rift for the first time. Father had to attend a conference, Mother and I would go with him, as we always did. Packed into our car, German-made, German-registered, with German number plates…West German. The autobahns were as clear, clean and efficient as only the Germans could create. The traffic marvelously disciplined, the super-fast lane a speedway for cars I only now can appreciate – Audis, Porsches, Ferraris. The turn-off for Berlin and the East was significant only because Mother suddenly said an audible prayer and asked me to sit up straight. The city was lively, lights on and traffic buzzing. And then there was a more careful control. Checkpoint Charlie. As Indians, we had no restrictions; as Herr Professor with a reputed institute, Father was entitled to an obvious respect. But rules were rules.

The evening was cold. The car was examined carefully. There was nothing underneath and no one hidden behind the seats or in the boot. But there was something: We had the wrong kind of number plates. They had to be changed. Father was outside, doing things with a screwdriver. We sat, Mother and I, in a small and very cold room, where the man behind the desk was not unfriendly, but hardly encouraging. Mother’s hand was cold, I was curious. At barely ten years old, it made little sense. Peering through the window into the deepening dark, I dimly saw high walls. Along the top wound rolls of barbed wire, punctuated by what looked like small houses – you could see the silhouettes of a couple of men in each; they were holding guns, I was told later. Outside, guards walked purposefully past, dogs pacing by their sides. Once it was all over, we drove across what was called No-Man’s Land, where many had died, I learned much later at a museum exhibit in the United States, trying to run away from the repressive world that was the East to a more gemutlich one in the West.

We lived in Germany when the Wall was still a symbol of division - in lifestyle, opportunity, economy and, of course, philosophy, apart from politics. At that time, there were two distinct Germanies, two vastly different lives. We travelled through Checkpoint Charlie a number of times and my very young memory still sees moments of watching the dogs and the soldiers march grimly along that narrow divide between the two nations. Having mirrors rolled under the car and the seats pulled out and poked to see if anyone was inside when crossing into Czechoslovakia, as it was then, or having our luggage turned inside out while going into Hungary, for instance, was not as dark an experience. My kiddie vision of the wall was not a graffiti-laden stretch, but grey brick, cold and truly nightmarish.

Voice over

So, back to the Kala Ghoda (mini) Festival…

It was a long evening and my feet hurt. But somehow the adrenaline had taken over and I could not feel anything (no, not even my aching feet, unless I thought about them) beyond the humid warmth of the evening and the beat of the music pounding somewhere deep inside me. I had run up and down the high stairs of the amphitheatre so many times that I could do it with my eyes closed (and me with fairly severe vertigo, too!), and knew my script for the compeering stint I was doing almost by heart, allowing for an occasional pause for a comma or to swallow a cough. Once in my car for the drive back home, I could feel the entire sequence of events go through me, from the moment I started getting dressed at home to the time I walked to the car after a nice dinner and a hug from a close friend I had dined with. And somehow it all ended up at my feet, which throbbed in parts and reveled in the highness and sharpness of my heels in others.

The fashion show was to be at 7 pm that evening. At 3, when I was leaving my home to drive into town, I was vaguely sleepy and not sure I wanted to get into whatever I had got into. But having got into it, I had to honour my commitment and stay with the programme. The ride was punctuated by regular calls from the store I was helping with the show, asking where I was with rising levels of hysteria with each conversation. Finally, I was there and bounced happily up the stairs that I have a tendency to fall up and in through the glass door, to be greeted in various pitches by various people in various degrees of panic. There was a rehearsal in progress, with many of the models not sure where they should be, which side they should face and what their next move should be. Some were in advances stages of makeup, with strangely ghostly faces glowing pink and beige, unlike anything real and human. Under the arc-lights they would look very pretty, but in the afternoon sun filtering through the windows of the space, they seemed like visitors from another planet.

I played Mother Hen quite happily. One girl was almost in tears because of something the manager had said the previous night. Another had no idea what to do after she had finished the second turn and was forgetting how she got to where she was standing every time the choreographer yelled at her for being there two beats too long. Two of them looked so grim that they could have fit right in at a retrenchment meeting , while a couple of others stood morosely around wondering when they would get something to eat. I wandered about wondering what I was doing there, but oddly enough enjoying the chaos; it was like the days when I danced on stage, and spent many moments feeling like the only oasis of calm and sanity in a world that was rapidly descending into hell flavoured by hysterics.

Finally, the show began. In the sound box at the very top of the amphitheatre I was positioned just behind and to the right of the sound engineer, my fingers ready to tap him on the shoulder every time I wanted the music turned down. The other hand multitasked – holding on to my script, waiting to tap the light-man on HIS shoulder when I needed the spotlight on or off and the stage in darkness, hanging on to my purse that dangled from arm and holding on to the rail to keep my head from spinning itself off my neck at such a steep height away from street level. My slippers were off and placed neatly on the step behind me, my bare soles feeling every tiny pebble under them as I stood there. The dance performance in progress on the stage ended, applause crashed out echoes against the stone blocks of the amphitheatre and I got my cue…

The commentary went smoothly. I managed not to stumble over my carefully crafted words, no cough burst into my sentences and everything worked as it should have, even with an unexpected demand from backstage to keep talking since the girls were not ready for the next sequence. One set of garments gave way to the next, each segueing neatly into the other. There were, of course, glitches – one girl went in the wrong direction after a central turn, leaving her partner standing on one leg for a small moment, not sure where to walk to. Two of the girls collided gently somewhere in the middle, but recovered fast and continued their sashay along their designated paths. And a model-designer finished her sequence with incredible sangfroid and professionalism even as her husband collapsed in the audience with a serious health problem.

As soon as it was over, I thanked my new-found friends in the sound box and bounced down the stairs, bag in one hand and slippers in the other. Once on the road, I put on my heels and ran – the pain was not being felt yet – across to the greenroom to check on the girls. They were ecstatic, laughing and exclaiming at their success. I was hugged by the store owner, the manager, the choreographer, the models…perhaps even by an unknown gentleman who seemed very happy to be part of the group, no matter who he was and what he was doing there. It had been a long day, and I would probably regret parts of it when I had time to think about it all, but for that moment, I was pleased with life. It was time to meet my friend, get my hug and giggle over a quick dinner….