Clueless in Caledonia!

It is been a long while since I ve written something in this blog of mine. A lot has changed in my life since the last blog. Then I was in my motherland and now I am in another part of the world. I am in the midst of a dfferent culture, a different society and defenitely a different way of thinking. But I enjoy it. It seems to me as a great challenge.

I arrived here in Glasgow , friendless, with the objective of getting a masters degree. What can I expect? Its a new world. I can speak their language and also understand them, but I dont have anything else in common. But when I get to the flat arranged to stay, what do I find??? Three other mallus.... and on top of that a Bengali girl whom I ve trained at IMS for GRE as flatmates! What more culd I ask for. I was in a situation when I could have the cake and eat it too, with the icing and all.

And now about Malayalees... they are everywhere. Legends say that when Niel Armstrong landed on the moon, there was a nair's tea shop there selling chaya and parippuvada! So we are leading this existence which has not changed much from the one we were leading back in India. We blabber away in Mal except for the enlightened occassions we feel the necessity to speak in the local language( Its English here!)

And now taking you( the reader...waiting for you to read my blog) to the streets. I suppose you would think that scotland is a remote and mysterious place where indians have not infiltrated much. You are mistaken my friend. you cant walk on the road without banging on to one. The brown skin is absolutely ubiquitous. And beware! you would find some sharing the same colour as yourself and think of exchanging niceities. But when they open their mouth, what comes out is Glaswegian in its purest form.

About the language ... Glaswegians have a very different accent. First I couldnt understand anything. You couldnt even lip sync because their lips barely move. You could only hear some sounds coming out of their mouth. But you could try to understand what they say from the context. But now I am picking up. Classes are fantastic and the people are friendly. You can get a smile and a hello from anybody on the street. So thats about my initial experiences about Glasgow. I have lots to update but now i should go to the kitchen and think of preparing something. Its been a lifetime since I ve had Idli and sambar. But it costs around 10 pounds for Idli sambar, almost 830 bucks. my mouth is watering...

Oh Simple Faith... Where have you Gone

Oh Simple Faith ….Where have you gone…

These lines have been reverberating in my mind for the past few days. During my morning journeys to office, music was the sole companion. Bangalore city, in all its hurry, would pass in front of my eyes and I would drink in all the sights and think about what happened, what is happening and what would happen in my world and others’.

Thus one day I came across this song by Keane and it became my favourite.It has a quality which puts the listener into a trance. The song is worded thus:

"I walked across an empty land,
I knew the pathway like the back of my hand
.I felt the earth beneath my feet,
Sat by the river and it made me complete.
Oh, simple thing, where have you gone?
I'm getting old and I need something to rely on.
So tell me when you're gonna let me in,
I'm getting tired and I need somewhere to begin."

The song is addressed to some body’s love. The refrain “o simple thing where have you gone” is catchy. But whenever I hum the song, what comes to my mind is “oo simple faith where have you gone.”
This can be because they coincide with my thoughts.

I have studied in my school textbooks that man is a social animal. He lives in groups and shares his existence with the fellows of his group. But Charles Darwin has propounded that human evolution was through “survival of the fittest”. That means the fittest human being in a group will survive at the expense of others in the group. But this theory does not support the social sharing theory. When a man helps another to survive, is he reducing his own chance to survive?
The question for which I am seeking answer is “To what extent we can expect help from another human being?” would a human being help another to rise to a level higher than himself? Well my experience is that you should expect the least or you should not expect at all. Keep your expectation low and you ll be happy with what you have got.
How much can we expect from friends. Would a friend threaten his own existence to help you? Would you thwart your own chances of survival to help your best friend? I think such friendships are only the dreams sold by the silver screen and the tinsel world.

Well, I might be thought of as contradicting myself as I have written about friends and the nostalgia that that is created by their absence. I am a fortunate person gifted with lot of good and true friends. But my personal belief is that friendship thrives if you give more and take less. To be honest, my friends have helped me a lot. During my Post Graduate studies, our class was a co operative society. We wrote assignments, even projects for each other and our co operation even extended to class tests. Still I did not expect the same warmth when I started working.

There again, the conclusion that I came to is that expectations cause disappointments. When you expect the least, you get a lot more than you expected. If you expect a lot, the chances that you ll be disappointed are greater. For me this theory has worked, be it friendship or working relationships.

Disorder in its Manifestations

I came home for a short period of time. Though I have to leave tommorow this journey gave me some interesting insights and also some valuable associations. The best part was my journey home which involved a little adventure..... I carried a small puppy home and i am so thrilled about it.

The inspiration for this blog comes from my little sister with whom I had a long and informative chat. It was raining outside and we found time for some gossip. But the topic changed to something entirely different- manias and phobias. She explained to me the differences between delusion, illusion and hallucination. It was really a download of knowledge and I, being very much associated with GRE, found it extremely illuminating.



Some Interesting Manias:



Ablutomania: i d heard about this obsession before. Only I was not aware of the term used to define it. This is a passion for getting clean, bathing. When I checked I found an antithesis for this ; ablutophobia which is obviously the fear of bathing. We also came across Trichotillomania. A person who has this obsession will suffer from an irresistable urge to pull out his or her hair.



Kleptomania is a well known obsession. It is the impulse to steal which is not provoked by need and it is easy to remember since i ve seen many with this impulse. Since the kleptomaniac is always bound to be your friend or an important person to be offended, very difficult for the mania to surface.

Megalomania: A psychological state characterised by delusions of grandeur, found mostly in CEOs, Software engineers, directors of organizations and many mallus. I ve heard that Hitler was a megalomanic. Ted Hughes' poem Hawk Roosting gives a glimpse of the ramblings of a megalomaniac:
My feet are locked upon the rough bark.
It took the whole of CreationTo produce my foot, my each feather:
Now I hold Creation in my foot...

The allotment of death.
For the one path of my flight is direct
Through the bones of the living.
No arguments assert my right:

The sun is behind me.
has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change
.I am going to keep things like this

It is very interesting to read about the manias and phobias that grip human beings. A study of these would also throw light into the mechanisms of psychology. Though it is a very vast subject, the study s worth it because of the insights that it provides into human behaviour.

It's Yesterday Once More...

I think that it's universal that we never realize the value of the 'present' unless it becomes the 'past'. We take it for granted that the present is given to us and we whine and complain about it. It s not that i turned a philosopher overnight, but its just that I am very nostalgic now a days. I crave for things which i had taken for granted in my yesterdays. But you cant help it. You can never get it back...the past, once gone, is gone.

What prompts me to write this much gibberish is the visit of a friend from college. It was a very short meeting but it renewed the warmth of friendship in me. It also opened up a treasure box of memories. School and college life gives you so much freedom. Nobody expects you to behave like adults, nobody expects you to understand things that you dont understand. Its like wearing a burkha... you can see everbody and nobody can see you, and you can always ask these wierd funny questions.

I really miss my schooldays. we used to enjoy so much and yet we thought that we were suffering like hell. The same was the case with my College. We had a smasher of time and my friend's visit brought so many fond memories. I ransacked old files to find tokens and found an interesting one, the picture of a rattle snake. I took it when my friends and I went for a little walk near the lake. It was a magnificent animal with golden yellow scales. Some of us shrunk back but for people like it was a rare sight to be captured. It was a fun moment and a hair raising adventure for a bunch of girls.

I am in love with that place, my hometown and that beautiful lake. I am in the mood to sing " country roads, take me home... to the place , I belong...

Home

Today I am going back to Bangalore, after a week's stay in my ancestral home. Its very difficult to think of life in Bangalore now. All you could feel is suffocation ... of living a cramped life. Here, you just have to close your eyes and inhale the sweet fragrance of the air to identify that it is Sasthamcotta. I ve always been a little claustrophobic. I ve loved the open skies and and not the enclosed four walls inside a concrete jungle. I ve been madly in love with the beautiful "kayal" here, I ve loved the rain that falls on the sweet earth and lets out that heavenly fragrance. I ve loved the little pools and the big streams that rain brings with it. But still I am going back...

I am going back to hectic mornings ( because I sleep till 8), traffic jams that last for hours and living a life in which i ve never stopped once and asked myself " where am I going?". Yes life is fast and you wont get time to think much about yourself. That's a blessing and a curse. You wont feel the pain of what you lost and its a curse in that you wont even know how many years passed by.

But it is good in a way. You are just a speck in the vast blue sky, just a drop in the deep blue ocean. You are invisible and that's an enjoyable thing. Here whatever you do , eyes watch you ...you are on the centre stage. But there...you can sit back and enjoy the sights. That's worth the sacrifices.

Two Women Who Sang of Death

Human beings go through different emotional phases in their lives. If all could express what they feel verbatim, there would ve been no difference between a layman and a poet . To translate into words, the language spoken by the mind, is a tedious task. I am reminded of a great writers confession that producing a literary work is like giving birth to a baby. The prospective author has to go through all the pangs of childbirth.

This is why I admire two great women of letters who found a perfect expression of their mind’s language in poetry, though a century separates them. The first one Emily Dickinson, focused on themes relating to death, eternity, and love, usually in short four-line stanzas. Sylvia Plath on the other hand tried to exorcise the oppressive male figures that haunted her life in her poetry. I feel that sylvia’s poems are a successful attempt at unraveling the hazy maze that was her mind. Going through them is a tedious task for a superficial brain, but a rewarding experience for an intutive one.

Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.
We slowly drove, he knew no haste,
And I had put awayMy labor,
and my leisure too,
For his civility.

Emily Dickinson

Death is described as a suitor or a gentleman caller in this poem by Dickinson. Whenever I read this poem, an analogy comes to my mind in a poem called Ente Veli. I think it was by Olappamanna.

The day she visited the dissecting room
They had four men laid out, black as burnt turkey,
Already half unstrung.
A vinegary fume
the death vats clung to them;
The white-smocked boys started working
. The head of his cadaver had caved in,
And she could scarcely make out anything
In that rubble of skull plates and old leather
. A sallow piece of string held it together.
In their jars the snail-nosed babies moon and glow.
He hands her the cut-out heart like a cracked heirloom

from Two Views of a Cadaver Room: Sylvia Plath.

Though this poem is not for the faint hearted or the traditional mindsets, it stands out due to its glaring difference from conventional poetry. This enthralling difference is there in most of her poems. She uses images of cadavers and skull plates in a poem which also speaks of love!

We used to adore her poetry in college and had sessions of discussions on her poetry and life which itself was mysterious. One of our beloved lecturers, Dr Susheel had done his Phd in Plath. So all the dicussions were moderated by him. I still remember that in one of the discussions I opined that Plath was suffering from insecurity ( which is obvious) and there were traces of self pity in her poems and she wrote these poems to attract attention to her frail and insignificant life.

I always believed that I had rare insights into her thought processes. Dont know why. But now I feel that it is just a phase and it will pass. Poetry especially confessional poetry has a connection with solitude and sadness. I agree with Shelley that " the sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought". Poetry springs from alienation, pain and distress. It cannot be denied that there are sweet songs that have sprung from daffodils and running brookes. But I feel that they lack the "essential sadness" which creates a bond with the reader's heart.

Achan

I ve wanted to write something for a long time. But couldnt convert my thoughts into words. I wanted to write about my father. What could I write about him? I dont have a clue at this point of time. Its a personal sorrow, nobody else would be bothered. They would ask " oh you lost your father ...how sad". Yes, I lost my father and i am not sad for him. I am sad for myself. When I sit alone in a corner of my room here, thoughts haunt me. ..how he was always there for me, how he was a pillar of strength. I just needed him to be there and I would have braved every sea of trouble.

But he is gone, and I am alone.

There is this interesting incident in my childhood. I dont remember when it happened or where . My father and I were walking fast through a crowded place, probably a railway station. I clung to his hand and tightly. But a wave of people came and separated us. I was terrified for a moment but soon found a hand like my father's and ran to it and clung on. We walked a few steps and suddenly I looked up. I remember the shock that I had. It was not my father. It was somebody else!. I was very young and memories of those days come to me as jigsaw puzzles ...several frames of pictures without connectivity. The important events are stored as snapshots. I dont remember how I got back to my father, the next picture that I have is of him waiting for me at a corner where my rescuer handed me over to him.

Funny that I ve never asked my mom or dad about this incident... inspite of being an overly curious kid. It may because there are so many unanswered questions in my mind regarding the snapshots of childhood memory.

But now... I feel that he s been separated from me again and this time I am not sure whether he ll wait for me at the top of the stairs with a smile in his face. I dont want to look up and see that the hand that I am clinging to now is a child of my imagination. Be there with me acha... always.