Another Year Past

The fireplace flickers in the wind.

Long, undulating tongues of yellow flame, deep blue hearts inside, leap up against the cast iron flue as the wind rushes down the chimney. In front of it, almost impervious to the furnace-like heat, he sits. Pensive, he gazes into the flames, the glass of Bordeaux by his side slowly losing flavour as its absorbs the heat radiating across the room.

It is late at night; the footfall and raucous chatter of the tourists from the nearby hotels that dot Bayswaters’ period squares have fallen silent. Only very infrequently is the silence on the streets disturbed by the sound of a London black cab driving another reveller home after a night spending money – whether hard-earned or not is irrelevant in London’s overpriced venues – to go home for rest, and possibly recuperation for another day, another drunken revel.

The silence, and the lassitude that envelops the neighbourhood could be depressing. For someone naturally melancholic as him, though, the quiet stillness that fills London streets during the Christmas holidays is restful. For the first time in days, he has had time to think.

And to reflect on another year gone past.

Professionally, things could not have gone better. A pay rise of almost 60% over the course of a year is nothing to complain about, especially in this economic climate. He’s always restless, but there’s nothing new about that. Better to be restless than to be complacent, in any case, right?

Travel – a long standing love – has been good this year. It all kicked off with a week long excursion to Bali with friends, followed by New York in February. There was a brief hiatus in spring, but following a weekend away in France for a friend’s wedding, it’s been a (primarily) European rollercoaster – Berlin, Amsterdam, Athens, France again, Ibiza (for the first time) and then a week long adventure in India in November. And now, here at the end of the year, he has a weekend in Berlin to look forward to and to welcome in 2011.

Love. How was that in 2010? It could have been better. But then, it could have been worse. Much worse. Perhaps the greatest thing about his love life in 2010 was learning to love himself, to learn what was and was not acceptable, and to be honest. To the other person, but most importantly, to himself.

And so with little to complain about, and a great deal to be thankful about, he gazes into the fireplace, saying a small prayer of gratitude to the gods for the decisions, and happy coincidences, and accidents of circumstance, that have brought him to this place.

And that allow him to hold his head up high and look forward to a new year, and look forward to it with hope and excitement.

Dear reader, he bids you a very Happy New Year!

So many days later.

I've been terrible at blogging these past few months. So much happening, so much not happening. So it's been infrequent posts.

So that's what I've been doing these past few months. Lots of travel - Greece, France, the USA, Germany, Spain (Ibiza), India, and France again. Now looking forward to spending New Year's in Berlin, my favourite city in the whole wide world.

So many books too. And ever since I bought my iPad, it's been amazing at how much I find reading ebooks so therapeutic. I've downloaded so many old classics too, including Cicero, Virgil and Thackeray.

So I apologise for the lack of a blog post. And at the same time, I don't really mean it when I say I'm sorry I haven't posted about my life.

Because I've been too busy living it.

Bending Race

So tonight I'm supposed to be in a good mood. I've had a great, relaxed weekend, watched some quality cinema, and also had an excellent first date. So this blog post should really shiny & happy, with lots of little gold stars twinkling at the edges.

Instead, this one is going to be a rant.

And the reason for the rant is pretty straightforward. For a change, it's not about something that's happened within my personal sphere of influence, but rather something that I saw in the public realm and that really, REALLY pissed me off.

So we're all on Facebook, right? (If you disagree with this statement, you're either in denial or just an imbecile for not remembering when you joined the site). And we all have friends whose photo uploads show up in our news feeds. And sometimes you find one that catches your attention, so you click on it.

And then, when the pic opens up full-size (or optimum size, if you must be technologically anal), you realise that it shows you something that makes your blood boil.

This picture below is what I saw, and when I saw it in full size, that's exactly what it did.

Now don't get me wrong. I usually love Glee. I think it's done wonderfully well in taking characters that are typically stereotyped in popular US TV shows and has brought them mainstream. So the characters in the show, despite being complete freaks by normal US social standards, are depicted as just "one of us" - young, ambitious, sometimes confused, teenagers who are misfits in their social surroundings for any of several reasons, and who really have the same dreams, aspirations and hopes that any human being of that age has.

So why the rage, you might well ask? Well - all I will do is point you to the third square in the first row. That's right - that's supposed to be Tina Cohen-Chang, the girl who has a goth fetish, a thing for Artie, and a voice to die for. Yet despite ALL the nuances of her character, she is reduced to being "the Asian one" for the poster. Not because there isn't more to her character - not by any stretch of the imagination - but because, when you're looking to identify her, it's somehow ok to call her "the Asian one" and get away with it. Note how the chubby black girl (see what I did there?) who plays Mercedes gets away with being the loud one, and even the whacky Mrs Schuester is granted the glory of THREE whole lines of text and gets to be "the one most likely to fake a pregnancy". So I guess we can't call "the fat black girl" that anymore, and we can't call the gays the gays, but those Asians - who f*cking cares? They're all yellow anyway.

Somehow though, all that the designers of this damn poster did when they pulled Tina's strap line together was that the only thing that seemed noteworthy about her was that she came from an ethnic group that currently makes up ~50% of the world population. WOW - WHAT AN INCREDIBLY UNIQUE IDENTIFIER FOR THE CHARACTER.

So this rant is probably slightly reactionary, but what amazes me, time and time again, is just how backward the US can sometimes be in its approach to race and issue. Other places in the world are getting better at this - though not by much - but somehow public culture in the US seems to stubbornly want to stick to retrograde definitions and identifications of race, culture and identity.

And for those of you who think that this is a one-off phenomenon, all you need to do is look at the current controversy around the latest "Avatar - the Last Airbender" movie, with its incredibly problematic lactification of clearly non-Caucasian characters, its controversial casting calls, and ultimate degradation of quality that has created a massive online backlash.

And you know what pisses me off most about this? It's that a show that has done so well with other issues that have been traditionally taboo in US television had to be the one that still fucked up like this.

Bah, humbug.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another excerpt from the story that I'm currently working on. Something I've refined this evening, during yet another spell of insomnia.

Where is the place that all stories begin? Is there a single point from which all our narratives flow, a single indescribable nucleus, where all our pasts, our presents and our histories are determined? And if such a point exists, could we ever trace our steps back to that place, that wellspring of our human-ness, to redraw the paradoxes and petty tragedies of our frail existences? Is it that, then, which we seek all the time as we go through life, apparently aimless but in actuality searching for that which can never be found?

She has a story too. But perhaps the only truth in that story, hidden deep within a web of perceptions, opinions and delusions is that it has no single beginning. Like all stories, it is born anew at every single instant, but also dies in that instant, and is condemned to never be repeated ever again. For her story, like all stories, is nothing more than a string of innumerable instances, microcosms and random events intricately strung together, which each moment almost bearing no relation to the one that came immediately before, or the one that will follow it only a second later

And that is why when she looks for a place to begin, to find out where it all started and where things were inexorably set it motion (oh, that cliché), she is unable to identify a single point, a single over-arching instant in her life to start.

But stories are born to be lived, to be told, to be passed on from the lips of one generation to the next, carrying within them the seeds of destruction that all humanity is inherently drawn to. Years later, she will look back onto that night and recognise that it was her one chance at sanity, for succour, and yes, for redemption. But that redemption can only be achieved through her narration, standing in an invisible confessional box, her past lives and sins surrounding her as clearly as angels and demons richly carved in dark mahogany.

And so she must find a place to begin, to find a single place in her past from where she can stand and begin to draw the tangled threads of her past three years into a single cohesive weave, finding patterns and order where none perhaps have, never will exist. On this night, as she drives all through the night through the rain that hammers the North Indian plains in August, smoking endless cigarette after cigarette, she will force herself to remember.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another late night in London.

My insomnia kicks in on the strangest days. Today, after a week of insanely busy days at work, with a social calendar that's packed to the brim, I thought I would sleep like a baby. Fat chance. It's now 2:30 and I'm still awake; bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, willing to go out for a run, or a drink, or both. Probably not a good idea, but there you go.

So here I am, in a garret bedroom in Notting Hill, with the windows open on this warm summer night. My laptop is warm on my lap; the duvet lies pushed down around the end of the bed. I've got Florence + The Machine playing on Spotify, and a table fan whirring softly in the corner.

It's at moments like this that I have to love my life.

Nothing special, nothing important. Just a single moment when I can look around, at a life that I've built slowly, painstakingly, bit by bit. I've gotten to a place where I think I am, if not happy, then at least...serene, calm, comfortable.

Not content, though. Never content. Always trying, always struggling, always reaching. Things need to be done, places must be visited, lives must be improved upon. It is difficult to not always want to achieve. Especially when in my own head there are so many failures, so many shortcomings, to compensate for.

Dreams, ambitions, goals. All shorthand for the misery that we can cause ourselves by wishing for too much. For trying too hard. For staying so hooked into the whole system that we forget to stop and measure the moments, minute, infinitesimal, that make up this fragile life of ours.

I think it was a schoolteacher - one of the Dominican friars at my Catholic school in Namibia - that introduced me to the Latin saying, per aspera ad astra. To the stars through difficulties. The same teacher told me that if you aimed for the stars, you'd get to the treetops.

And I always wondered how unsatisfying those treetops would be, especially when you kept looking at the stars that you missed out on.

Self-Centred Introspection

A half moon rises over the high rise council estate flats of Notting Hill.

Deprivation.

The moon is blood red. Dust in the air, prismatic reflections of pale light. Wisps of cloud fleetingly linger over the semi-circular cusp of reddish-white in the air.

Il pleut toujour sur les maisons de Londres a minuit.

My heart - the half that remains with me - cries with the weather. The other half, the half that I gave you; the half that you wrenched away from me - rests with you. Happy, sad, uncaring, I know not.

Do you stay awake at midnight, wondering if I'm thinking of you, the way that I do, standing here at the window of a garret room in West London, staring at a moon that stays suspended mid-air, close enough to reach out and touch, far away enough to be just out of reach?

I don't want to fuck up anything. I just want to be with you.

But its too late for that. I've already fucked things up, taken it to a point where we're beyond redemption. And now all that is left to me is this moment, standing alone in a cold room in an empty apartment, where all that is left to keep me company are my memories.

And this, a blood-red half-moon, lingering in front of my face, the way that you do.

Just out of touch.

Self-Centred Introspection

He sits, eyes, closed, on the Bakerloo line, right opposite him. Hair black, his Japanese eyes screwed tightly shut, mere slits against a face pockmarked with rashes and pimples. The faded grey of his backpack (waterproof, durable, outdoorsy, careworn, used) flat on his lap. His fingers, - rapid, prismatic, a blur – move the small plastic cube, almost inexorably.

Turning, turning, turning.

The tyranny of symmetry. The rules are simple: red adjacent to red, blue next to blue. Orange all on one side, white on another. Miscegenation is the enemy, order, purity, a bland monotony the idyll to be striven for.

It has taken the man only two stops (Baker Street to Edgeware Road) to complete the Rubik’s cube.

***

He walks calmly into the stationers. Stillness. Life here is calm, ordered, comprehensible. In the neat ruled sheets of Pukka Pads, in front of the walls of coloured plastic folders, ring binders and clutch pencils he finds a strange tranquillity. Things are not complicated here, decisions lose the menace of their implications. His decisions are bounded by the cardboard ends of the notebooks that he peruses. Sex is merely the static that burns his fingertips as he runs his hand against the wall of paper in a brightly lit store in Notting Hill. Simplicity.

Self-Centred Introspection

Another night, another memory of you.

I always sleep naked. My skin, hot, feverish, sexual, burns against the cold touch of the duvet cover. Normally, your naked form next to me kept me warm, the pale expanse of your back a figura to warm myself against in the cold of the London night. But you've left, so I'm left here to my own devices as I look to warm myself in this, the coldest of London summers.

Damn you. You left me bereft of everything.

But still, we soldier on. Call me a hundred times, and I'll come to you, atleast a hundred times. It's the price I pay for giving you my heart that one, innocent time. If I weep from one eye, then you tell me - how can I keep the other one closed?

Self-Centred Introspection

A few years ago, someone in New York gave me a black Moleskine notebook, and told me that I should use it to write down my thoughts when I'm feeling pensive. I took the book, and then forgot about it for a couple of years. Last year though, while packing for my six months of travels, I found that notebook in my desk drawer and decided to take it on a whim with me.

Funnily enough, I started writing in it only about half-way through my travels, when I felt that I had accumulated so much to say and write that I had to put it down before I forgot. So I finally started the first entry one afternoon in Angkor Wat, after spending several hours contemplating the incredibly humid, worn-down beauty of the temples there. Since that happy time, I've begun carrying it around even though I'm no longer travelling and will often scribble a few sentences in it. Usually this happens when I'm on the tube in London, since public transport allows you to observe so many different people anonymously, while letting you stay secluded in your own little world.

So from today, I'm going to start (selectively) putting up some of the excerpts that I've written down. I'm going to tag these posts "Self-Centred Introspection" since that's exactly what they are - my thoughts about me and my life, with no real purpose, meaning or intent.

So here it is - the first one.

Today I’m at peace. Things are calmer, my thinking is clearer. I understand what it is that I need to keep me happy.

That doesn’t mean that I am automatically happier. But that I know – intellectually, rationally, calmly – what it is that I need to do to be so.

Tourists wearing A&F in the District Line. My eyes shut, I see flashes of your naked chest as I rest my head on it. The sexy, acrid smell of your armpits, the hair brown & curling; I can hear your sighs as I recall our lovemaking.

The air in this train is cold, crisp, damp. Spanish filters through the soft strains of the music on my iPod. I rejoice in the minute details. The ruff of my jacket against my neck, unshaven, scented, stubbly. The taste of that last beer lingers in my mouth. The cold of the glass partition seeping into my shoulder as I lean against it.

I am told that memories are made of this.

My Name is Singh and I am who I am

I had first heard of My Name is Khan back in the summer of last year, after Shah Rukh Khan was, somewhat ironically given the plot & premise of the movie, held at US immigration for a few hours as the airport authorities found him suspicious on the basis that his surname was “Khan”. The story was soon dropped, but for a few hours, the rapacious Indian media feasted on the bones of the scandal. (As an aside, I love using the word “rapacious” – it reminds me of the Velociraptors in the Jurassic Park movies)

So going to see the movie last night with an Austrian friend who is rapidly sinking into the quagmire that is Bollywood-mania, I had a pretty good premise of what the movie would be like. My concerns were primarily around the fact that the movie was a Karan Johar production, especially since KJ is never quite known for being subtle or discreet, but prefers to hammer in the ham & emotion with a sledgehammer. Don’t get me wrong – I love my good ole’ Johar flicks – but I was intrigued how a filmmaker of his ilk would treat something as sensitive as racial profiling in the USA in a post 9/11 world.

This blog-post is not meant to be a review, so I won’t spend much time going over the fundamentals of the film. But the reason I’m writing this piece is because there were many elements of the story yesterday that resounded quite closely with me, and that I found particularly affecting. And at the very end, for me, a film is only successful if it can relate to you personally; the big bang glamorousness of a blockbuster is only as good as the emotions it can generate in your heart. That is why the first Star Wars worked, while the more recent additions to the franchise don’t. And that is why My Name is Khan is, at least in my eyes, a successful film.

The reason for this is pretty straightforward – MNIK is a film about being different, not being typically like the others around you, and about having the courage and conviction to embrace the identity that is yours, regardless of how well that lets you “fit in”. Rizwan Khan is, in the movie, the ultimate outsider, who through his entire life inhabits liminal spaces. In India, his minority status is based on his religion. In school, he is bullied by peers for his autism. At home, his brother resents him for being the centre of his mother’s attention. In the broader US community, he is an immigrant. In the US Muslim community, he is a vocal moderate willing to challenge fundamentalists, who marries a Hindu divorcee with a child (herself a minority). But the Khan we see in the movie is someone who is at peace with his own identity, in whatever the circumstances. He is not necessarily able to understand why other people do not like him, but at no point do we see him turn around and say, “I wish I was not Muslim / autistic / brown ..."

And for me, this is where the success of the movie lies. Unlike other commentators, who have moaned at length about how "unrealistic" the movie is, I don't really give a damn (especially since most of the same commentators had raptures over an equally improbably Inglourious Basterds.) I don’t care how “cognitively realistic” the movie was, but how "emotionally realistic" it was. I don’t need to know why Rizwan Khan travels the length & breadth of the US, in his attempts to meet the US President and tell him that he is not a terrorist by virtue of his name. Fundamentally, none of these elements really matter.

Perhaps my perspective is skewed by my circumstances. I am an Indian national who has lived less than a third of my life in the country of my nationality, but my identity is intensely Indian, primarily founded on a childhood travelling with parents who were diplomats. I was not born in India, but in Pakistan, which means that unlike other NRI’s who travel back to India, I am now increasingly subjected to intense scrutiny at Indian immigration, where officers are perplexed that someone who was not born before Partition can have an Indian passport even though he was born in Pakistan (the same happenstance raises eyebrows at many airport check-in counters, immigration barriers, and cocktail parties). And even though I am proud to be an upper-caste Rajput Hindu with an impeccable lineage that I can track back hundreds of years by name, I find much in religion to be tedious and ritualistic; something that is exploited by clergies to keep the masses in check.

But the results of this upbringing are ubiquitous. I find that India drives me insane, but outside the country I am one of its most impassioned (and I would hope, erudite) defenders. I have lived much of my life overseas, and as a frequent traveller on an Indian passport have the infinite joy of having to apply for millions of visas ahead of any journey. At the same time, the idea of giving up my passport for a more convenient one, though attractive from a purely pragmatic point of view, is quite emotionally difficult. I have friends who are activists of all sorts across the world – ranging from LGBT campaigners through to aid workers in Haiti, through to American Muslim university professors, much like Khan’s hijab-wearing sister-in-law in the movie, who wear the scarf not out of any circumstance of familial or gender-based suppression, but out a sense of identity and protest. Many times my friends have opinions or views that I cannot agree with. At the same time, the reason we are friends is because we are able to accept that we are inherently different, and are friends because, not despite, those differences.

And so perhaps because of these circumstances I was touched by the movie last night; and this is why the movie is "emotionally realistic". Rizwan’s message of being true to yourself, regardless of circumstances or environment, was a strong, touching and most importantly, personally relevant one for me. It reminded me that there are many other people out there in the world who are as different as I am from the others around me, with different hopes, aspirations, dreams and identities; people who cannot claim to be from any “majority”, but that ultimately it is important to remember that despite being different, it is still possible to be yourself.

And perhaps, even, to be happy.