The Sister

Pia and I share the good stuff about being siblings, sans the crabby fights, sans sullen silences, sans even the clothes, shoes, and hairpins. We share affection that is easy; secrets that are uncanny; boyfriend issues that are past their prime, songs that are ours. We share without relenting, without giving in. We grew up in different cities, had different lives, but Pia and I were bound together by something irreplaceable - an invisible thread that had for yards a zillion missives unwritten…missives of stories of sweltering summers in Bengal; of Toffee - her big bowl, her red brush and steel comb; of me having more dog hair on my pullover than hair on my head; of my big failures, my bigger triumphs…Pia has it all wrapped up her curious curly hair, her podgy palms and her trademark “talk to me”. However, our interludes today are of a different kind. The threadbare Enid Blytons have been replaced by hoity-toity décor magazines. Our missives are not unwritten anymore; they are typed furiously at all odd intervals on slippery android phones. Our banter though is still mad, sparkling and our foibles several. Perhaps, Pia and I are similar…but the sameness is exhilarating.

To Calcutta...from her errant child

The autumn breeze envelops me. The season is wrapped in nostalgia for it brings back the hum-drum of Kolkata...its wayward streets ending at right angles, punctured by frippery in blushes of red, festooned with rows of colourful paper strung on wires - a trail to follow perhaps for my aching heart. The first sight of the day, the sun shining gently on the expanse of the park in front of my home is an every day reminder of the disquiet that is amiss; the exhilaration that is adrift. Calcutta, her scent is fast fading. Her songs, I now listen to on YouTube. Its lilt no longer fills my mornings. Its drumbeats don't reverberate in the corridors anymore. I still can't read and write in Bengali. My vocabulary is sparse, at best modest. I do not know more than ten songs of Rabindrasangeet. I have read Srikanta in English. Fourteen years of schooling with English as the language of etude and a mom who was an army kid and did not grow up in Bengal are the most glaring reasons of my ignorance. The genuine reasons are indifference; inattention...tedium even. I seldom made a serious, concerted effort to be unlike myself. A lot is lost now: friends...memories...delightful winters, what is also lost is my disregard for her, for it is only she who knows of the childhood irreplaceable, the follies unmentionable...the unforgettable interludes with the most beautiful lover. The colours have faded, fade they will still, but autumns in my life shall only belong to Calcutta.

Mumbai

Mumbai, like an ocean, has enveloped me. There’s something about its trains, its rains, its blasphemous crowds that bear this uncanny knack of yanking the survivor/ the rogue out of you. And I, ahem, have survived! I have survived flurried train-station-mini-stampedes, despicable office creeps, back breaking ‘no-maid’ days, laundry avalanches, crash and burn accidents with people while taking a de-tour whilst scurrying down the Dadar bridge en-route to office. Yes, Mumbai has drawn me in, without admonitions, wrapped me in a bubble, all while nudging me to try a little harder each time, every time.

The city is a far cry from all trite adjectives used to describe it - hurried it is, fast-moving it is - but Mumbai is also warm and delicious, enticing and scandalous. It is what you make of it, its misgivings, its idiosyncrasies, its irreverence and all.  

Its vagaries are manifold. Its annoyances several, but there is something inexplicable about the city that ties you to it with a long, invisible chord, and makes love for it grow roots rampant in your heart.

Sweet, aching are the million bindings that bind me to it, moulding me, breaking me, and re-shaping me in a manner that each life chapter bereft of its underpinnings; each story 'un-punctuated' by its vicissitudes seem insipid, unexciting.

My life here (as blah as it sounds) is a cocktail of long sojourns, aching heartbreaks, jocund friendships, and breathless detours and I, intend to gulp it with fervour while it lasts!

Critique of Sharira

This is an old college submission. I found it rotting in my mail-box. I am putting it on the blog... It could do with a well deserved outing, I thought.

Critique of Sharira.

Subverting the need to remind of and reconnect to religious iconography, Sharira enunciates that spirituality is as much about the body, as it is about the divine.

The choreography represents the dynamics of a man-woman relationship. It portrays birth, the role of man as a protector and provider, the unison of two sexes and the final integration of the male and the female forms.

The movements are terse and effortlessly amalgamate into each other, making the choreography a soothing syncretism of tradition and modernity. To an audience used to dance being velocious, the slowness plays with the ambit of concentration.

The economy of movement and attires devoid of ornamentation, are refreshing. The innovative synergy of yoga and Kallaripayattu with Bharatnatyam, dispel all timeworn, institutionalized notions of the classical form of dance. The choreography uses non-linear geometric forms to deconstruct the grammar of Bharatnatyam and lend it a new form.

Mythologising themes has enslaved dance in tradition, nostalgia, and sacredness, Sharira questions the set themes. It asserts that dance is the celebration of the body.

The interaction of the “male” and “female” forms, however, falls short of lending emotion or intellect to the relentless drift of the dance. It focuses too much on the form, making a Sharira a plastic treat for the eyes.

Tishani and Shaji are absolutely expressionless and detached from the audience. Even when they finally face each other in the 30 minute duration of the choreography, they remain impassive.

Although Chandralekha was widely known to be a feminist, the composition of the dance is extremely inconsistent in representing the female form. Sharira begins with depicting the female principle as the source of life; in the final integration of the female and the male forms, however, the “female” is depicted as upside down - an act that completely deconstructs the female principle.

Although the economy of movement is distinctive, there is not much variety in it, especially for Tishani.

Sharira uses the human body to represent the notions of sexuality and spirituality.

The use of the human form, however, demands spark, emotionality, and spirit.

Sharira fails to deliver all three.

Nothing more than feelings!

Like a rebel, a rogue, those wretched feelings they only grow. 

Thrusting, toeing...soaked in pleasure;

they fill our nights in myriad colours - a drop of scarlet, hot and bothered,

and a blush of pink, bearing a trail of fingers caressing skin.

Reassuring, tormenting, gently pushing, and gently prodding, 

in whispers they move, knowing well that every second is agonizing. 

Numb now, bolder then, parched with frenzy, they fight their way. 

Anguished with desire, trembling and shuddering they stay. 

They dance the perfect dance, jive to lilt; flap and tilt.

With them we move, gently rising.
Like leaps of fire, exuberant,
they enrapture you and me.

In our moments of quietness,

they lie still between us.

And then, when we are apart,
they pull us closer with their despairing chords.
throbbing in our veins like exquisite pain.
They lift us, wrapping us in...Oh those feelings within!