I am currently reading Akira Kurosawa’s “Something like an Autobiography”,

lingering at his “Boyhood” phase,  each paragraph is a rich visual feast, a  breathless journey into a magical landscape as captured by a little boy who was  a slow learner who loved kendo and painting. I, particularly, terminated myself at this chapter…

“The Fragrance of Meiji, the sounds of Taisho”…the master-crafter took all of us back to the days of his boyhood, a mystical world of sounds that does not exist anymore

 {Akira Kurosawa}“….the sounds I used to listen to as a boy are completely different from those of today. …everything was natural sounds. Among those natural sounds were many that are lost forever. Among those natural sounds were many that are lost forever. I will try to recall some of them. The resounding boom of midday. This was the sound of the cannon at the Kudan Ushi-ga-fuchi army barracks, which fired a blank each day precisely at noon.

The fire-alarm bell. The sound of the fire-watchman’s wooden clappers. The sound of his voice and the drumbeats when he informed the neighborhood of the location of a fire.   The tofu-seller’s bugle. The whistle of the tobacco-pipe repairman. The sound of the lock on the hard-candy vendor’s chest of drawers. The tinkle of the wind-chime seller’s wares. The drumbeats of the man who repaired the thongs of wooden clogs. The bells of iterant monks chanting sutras. The candy seller’s drum. The fire-truck bell. The big drum for the lion dance. The monkey trainer’s drum. The drum for temple services. The freshwater-clam vendor. The natto fermented-bean seller. The hot-red-pepper vendor. The goldfish vendor. The man who sold bamboo clothesline poles. The seedling vendor. The night-time noodle vendor. The oden (dumplings-and-broth) vendor. The baked-sweet-potato vendor. The scissors grinder. The tinker. The morning-glory seller. The fishmonger. The sardine vendor. The boiled bean seller. The insect vendor. “Magotaro bugs!” The humming of kite strings. The click of kite strings. The click of battledore and shuttlecock. Songs you sing while bouncing a ball. Children’s songs.

These lost sounds are all impossible to separate from my boyhood memories….when I saw the child of the freshwater-clam vendor, who raised a pitiful wail to sell his goods, I felt fortunate in my own lot in life…Children of today probably wont be able to fashion very rich memories from these sounds. Perhaps they are more to be pitied than even that freshwater-clam seller’s child…”

 (Jyo….The influence of each word was so intense that I ran down a specific memory lane when I was so scared of fire-alarms (every summer, I was the first one in my family to raise an alarm about the houses struggling under fire, in our neighborhood. Every monsoon, I stood on a dry place, with tears-stained face, feeling helpless and small, observed my parents shifting our belongings to a safer place)

Heavy dark clouds 
over a fragile leafless tree
- Morning News scream of Exploitation

{Baka, the doll in the middle…}

The Dolls were an attitude. If nothing else they were a great attitude.

Johnny Thunders

A doll is one of the most pressing needs as well as the most charming instincts of a girl childhood. It is one of those acquisitions with a certain prestige value, which little girls could flaunt to the world around, signals control+”I am better than you” status in the early phase of their childhood. Little girls with their dolls tucked under their arms or walking across the park, holding  their dolls upside down   are treated with mixed set of feelings : reverence+envy+admiration+excitement. ”I have a doll” indicates that the little girl is all set for an exotic trip to the world of fantasy, where what one loves to do, changes moment by moment, its so deliriously unpredictable! To undress it,  give it a bath with warm water filled with tiny pieces of flowers-petals under a shady tree, dress it with the most beautiful dresses, always on the look out for tiny yet beautiful pieces of cloth (one more dress for the doll),  comb its long tresses softly and gently, take it out for a stroll, teach it a bit, keep it as a little angel who protects me when the unseen-imaginary yet potent  devilish creatures pounce on me from all the corners of that tiny & dark library room, where I search for the books - Charles Dickens, Alexander Dumas, Mark Twain etc., give it food, sing it to sleep, pretend as if she is my daughter who I should take care of, who would grow up as a beautiful woman for who I have to search a nice boy, dreaming – singing – tending – sewing lovely garments (which I always wanted to wear, if I could fit in)….such a blissful self-introduction to the early womanhood. A doll in the little girl’s hand means easier an access & admirable acceptance to the gangs of little girls who play games like “Sweet Home-Pujas at home-Doll festivals at home-Sunday Lunch-Picnic-Marriage Procession” etc {games played by little girls from sleepy towns, then,  invariably, used to resemble varied actvities that their mothers do indulge in within the smaller circles of friends/relatives in the neighbourhood}.    A little girl without doll is as deprived and quite unnatural as a woman without a child…I never liked plastic dolls, have always preferred Patch dolls, dolls made of soft cottons, who have cherubic & warm  smiles plastered on their lovely faces, especially chubby dolls (Barbie is too skinny and too artificial). …we were deprived of dolls when we were children, which is a big reason for us to build up an impressive collection of dolls now

 {Mumbai}

When I looked up, the deceptively prominent construct of the shady tree looked down at me! I recalled Nemerov’s poem, especially, the lines “You may succeed in learning many trees….but their comprehensive silence stays the same..”

But best of all are the words that shape the leaves –
Orbicular, cordate, cleft and reniform –
And their venation – palmate and parallel –
And tips – acute, truncate, auriculate.

Sufficiently provided, you may now
Go forth to the forests and the shady streets
To see how the chaos of experience
Answers to catalogue and category.

Confusedly. The leaves of a single tree
May differ among themselves more than they do
From other species, so you have to find,
All blandly says the book, “an average leaf.”

Example, the catalpa in the book
Sprays out its leaves in whorls of three
Around the stem; the one in front of you
But rarely does, or somewhat, or almost;

Maybe it’s not catalpa? Dreadful doubt.
It may be weeks before you see an elm
Fanlike in form, a spruce that pyramids,
A sweetgum spiring up in steeple shape.

Still, pedetemtim as Lucretious says,
Little by little, you do start to learn;
And learn as well, maybe, what language does
And how it does it, cutting across the world

Not always at the joints, competing with
Experience while cooperating with
Experience, and keeping an obstinate
Intransigence, uncanny, of its own.

Think finally about the secret will
Pretending obedience to Nature, but
Invidiously distinguishing everywhere,
Dividing up the world to conquer it.

And think also how funny knowledge is:
You may succeed in learning many trees
And calling off their names as you go by,
But their comprehensive silence stays the same.

 

 

 

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As I write this now, it occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkably difficult to kill.

– Neil Gaiman, introduction to Fragile Things

{A Table Plant at my window}

It so happens I’m tired of just being a man.

I go to a movie, drop in at the tailor’s – it so happens-

Feeling wizened and numbed, like a big, wooly swan,

awash on an ocean of clinkers and causes.

A whiff from a barbershop does it: I yell bloody murder.

All I ask is a little vacation from things: from boulders and

Woolens,

from gardens, institutional projects, merchandise,

eyeglasses, elevators – I’d rather not look at them.

It so happens I’m fed – with my feet and my fingernails

and my hair and my shadow.

Being a man leaves me cold: that’s how it is.

{if you look at this pic closely, you may get the hint of a nest where the little crow who I named “Break free” lived with its mom and dad}

Still-it would be lovely

to wave a cut lily and panic a notary,

or finish a nun with a left to the ear.

It would be nice

just to walk down the street with a green switchblade

handy,

whopping it up till I die of shivers.

I won’t live like this – like a root in a shadow,

wide-open and wondering, teeth chattering sleepily,

going down to the dripping entrails of the universe

absorbing things, taking things in, eating three squares a day.

I’ve had all I’ll take from catastrophe.

I won’t have it this way, muddling through like a root or a

grave,

all alone underground, in a morgue of cadavers,

cold as a stiff, dying of misery.

That’s why Monday flares up like an oil-slick,

when it seems me up close, with the face of a jailbird,

or squeaks like a broken-down wheel as it goes,

stepping hot-blooded into the night.

Something shoves me toward certain damp houses, into

certain dark corners,

into hospitals, with bones flying out of the windows;

into shoe stores and shoemakers smelling of vinegar,

streets frightful as fissures laid open.

There, trussed to the doors of the houses I loathe

are the sulphurous birds, in a horror of tripes,

dental plates lost in a coffeepot,

mirrors

that must surely have wept with the nightmare and shame

of it all;

and everywhere, poisons, umbrellas, and belly buttons.

I stroll unabashed, in my eyes and my shoes

and my rage and oblivion.

I go on, crossing offices, retail orthopedics,

Courtyards with laundry hung out on a wire:

The blouses and towels and the drawers newly washed,

slowly dribbling a slovenly tear.

{a tree near the sea side, will soon get its fresh batch of leaves and branches}

………as usual, I am struggling to construct my thoughts. There’s so much happening around in those strips of local bazaars, where visibly tired men and women (after tiresome and demanding work) with their backs stretched over the baskets filled with fresh vegetables and greens, chatting up with the vegetable vendors, striking a better deal for the evening, the tired truck drivers indulging in light-hearted conversations with the barbers in a dimly lit barber shop, a group of women in their 40s standing frozen in their thoughts while waiting for the bus that takes them to their respective homes safe, a little girl standing next to her mother pouring clean water, collected in a small pot, over the Siva Lingam in the Hanuman temple, adjacent to a tiny shop that sells old junk, a few feet away, is a tiny mosque where men assemble in the afternoon to offer their prayers ….watching people going about their daily tasks, carrying on their faces a commitment to finish the varied tasks by the end of yet another emotionally debilitating day (this is true for many. Those fortunate ones can be counted on fingers), fills me with a sense of energy and optimism about the world and life, which seem to be hurtling towards shocking a level of unpredictability, these days. It’s like withdraw self from the world, bring the knees & limbs closer to the stomach, feel the tightness around the thighs, as if a human body is closing its doors tight against the world outside, crouch in the shadow of a branch that crawls against the bedroom window and draw strength from the little bird who is being fed by its mom. And meditate on decay, on life, silently. Interestingly, it’s the poor, the struggling class / the working class of the society gives me that required bit of energy and courage. The superficial and shallow beauty being flaunted by the rich and successful, the so-termed class disturbs me a lot.

Neruda’s “Walking Around”, a melancholic walk across streets, captures the existentialism of life, a sense of disappointment about the disturbance being caused by the structural progress, the destruction of nature and man himself. All of us, subconsciously (the screams of which, at times, are loud enough to cause tangibly felt discomfort), feel the need to take a “little vacation” from regularity of daily life, formulated in well-defined moves, i.e. get out of a rectangle shaped bed, 10 mins of reluctance with the hand perched on a sleeker rectangular bodied mobile communication device with curvaceous corners, enter the “phase of civilisation”, commute through the roads-based commotion that comes in various forms & sizes, walk into the artificially lit liveable-breathable-cylinder shaped environment, deliver organised talk (presentation) to the benumbed souls around a rectangle shaped wooden table…..one feels numb and staggered after such drone-like encounters! 

…All I ask is a little vacation from things: from boulders and

Woolens,

from gardens, institutional projects, merchandise,

eyeglasses, elevators – I’d rather not look at them.

(link :I touched upon Whore of Mensa by Woody Allen here)

“The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now, I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is here. And I also know how important it is in life, not necessarily to be strong, but to feel strong, to measure itself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind, deaf stone alone with nothing to help you but your hands and your own head..”

The film is amazing a personal journey that will touch one deeply. This reflection of the protagonist by the sea-side made me cry….

It’s review can be read at Rakesh’s …will insert my reviews later!