Amsterdam!

The orange guy on the right is MEEEIINN.

Well I'm in Amsterdam now. It's a gorgeous city and biking through it is like a return to school days when my bike was my steed, pride and joy. haapy. School has started and I dont like the readings being given out. Which is totally not like the last semester when every bit of paper was dripping with ANSWERS! To life questions. I think i will just make my own reading list instead.

I've been training myself to look at everything as performance. From cities to slut walks, to seemanthams, to praying in solitude. What does that mean? Well to me it's just meant that it's become impossible to view anything- an action, an event, a place or even a work of art, in a vaccumm without asking to the questions who, when, why? Which is great training for life in general, I opine, some people don't need MAs to get into that habit. Who is Anna Hazare, when did 'curry' come to mean a spice in itself, why are the house fronts in Central Amsterdam so narrow. Who designed my course, when did Rustom Bharucha gain so much fame and why the frick must i learn Rancier pretty much all theatrical traditions of Asia have intuitively arrived at these ends without all this  intellectual tossings and turnings?

Okay time to move on from performance. That was wearing a lens, not an eye transplant. I'm not abandoning it per se, but I'll be switching lenses now and then.

a very abstract update.

current location

It's been busy. Actually it's been a complete turnaround since that post in August.

It's interesting, how split up my life has become. back home, people are living, dying and being born. People i used to know well, people who populated my childhood and people who are increasingly vanishing from my present. And what about my present? I feel like one of the pilgrims, stumbled upon a parallel reality, so familiar from all the pictures and TV, but so different in lived experience.

There is gnawing sense of guilt. That for now my life is so good, while those left behind have no place here, except in letters, skype and phone calls. that I'm not there to console or share, except in letters, skype and phone calls. I have always been cowardly, preferring to sever my connection to the past, preferring to restart, and I have restarted many times, from a present moment where everything is new, like a new series on TV, where everyone arrives on the scene in episode one, always, already themselves.

I am a happy explorer of the world. But its so intense, I can hardly keep track. its so complex, i can hardly detangle it into a nice, noodle-like linear narrative. But I am going to try because otherwise, things will get remade in my own head each time i remember it. Chronicling is now a necessity.

I'm going to start blogging everyday again

JUST BECAUSE THERE IS SUDDENLY MUCH TO WRITE ABOUT.
And this is going to be a story blog because that's everything is a fiction once processed by synapses.

Love,
Aparna

...the sorry fact is
that we arrive here improvised
and leave without the chance to practice...
- Wislawa Szymborska

Another day, another banality

Art that is very emotional, does not endure. No, I have used the wrong word- not emotional, but sentimental, sentimentality in art is poisonous, it evades actually confronting emotions. Like Yanni’s compositions and Sarah McLaughlin songs and anything you can buy at Precious Thoughts. You come across them the first time and it makes you rise up and think- yes, that’s how I feel! After a while, you realize that you have moved on, those feelings are now mingling with the days in between and the thoughts in between and you feel something else. But there are no songs about these feelings in between, so you keep listening to the same ones- about the banalities of anger and hurt, or about how you’ll find the one, about how you’ll get over him, about how you’re stronger now or all about love, all entirely rubbish. I want a pop artist that talks about the in between, about the limbo feelings. Because that’s what an emotional nature actually carries around- a multitude of limbo feelings that are constantly mixing and mingling into each other, like a sea that’s fed by a hundred rivers.

Of Vidya Balan's saris and intellectual property violations that I'm not complaining about

A recent saturday afternoon found me with nothing to do but stretch out on my floor mattress and watch a pirated DVD of 'Paa', a rather nice movie which I had somehow missed for two years. During the course of this surprisingly enjoyable exercise, a new resolution dawned upon me. That the day I turned 35, I would make over my entire wardrobe to resemble Vidya Balan's starched sari ensemble. I thought about it; the sublime, cultured sensuality of stiff, deep green, mangalagiri cotton, complemented by a riotous pink kalamkari-work blouse, tied carelessly with string that stretches across the breadth of the shoulders. What a vision! I want to be nothing less than a vision past my mid 30s. Till then it shall be wildness.  

But of course, it won't be like that at all. When I'm 35 things will be even more random than they are now. There is no way, that in 2021 I will be in a situation where I can dress like that without appearing to be copying something I saw in an old Hindi movie circa 2009. And it wont even be old enough a style to be vintage, so I'll have to carry it off on the basis of the great Indian fabric tradition's innate timelessness and dignity (which I wouldn't be able to do with, say, Kajol's yellow spandex Speedo from KKHH, which will in fact be vintage by then).

Source: Jones, Owens (1856). "The Grammar of Ornament" Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, Berkshire, England. p. 85.

It'll have to be some sort of fusion trend then. The word 'fusion' itself getting so passe now, as every cultural marker is fast getting assimilated into one Jungian type collective unconscious. This is a beautiful dream- a reservoir of ideas from every culture in the world. Imagine the increase in possibilities for life, for office wear, for dinner! I made Jap-fusion Italian food a couple of days ago. That is, sprinkled my pasta with the sea-weed shaker stuff from McDonald's.

But the truth is that many cultures, the lessons they have learnt and their unique aesthetic sense wont survive this 'fusion' deluge. The prints on a particular $89 Zara shirt I saw yesterday, used to be on the bed sheets my parents bought from Jaipur in 1995, but of course nobody cares where those dancing flower patterns were born. The shirt was made in China.

Once upon a time, the explorer of the exotic wilderness was dressed in starched khaki colored pants and a white shirt. This most un-poetic of ensembles used conjure up the most exotic fantasies of adventure and discovery in mind, even though Khaki (which is derived from Persian and literally means dusty) is the ugliest color in the world, and I rue the day that this ignoble shade of dussssst became a wardrobe staple. Now the exotic wilderness is all over our blouses and trousers, even while we explore whatever is left of it. Is that a good thing right or a homage to diversity?

The Body in Question

These days, I've been thinking that this is such a body-unfriendly era. It's like our bodies are one big inconvenience that needs to be grudgingly endured, forcefully lived in and maintained like some old house you inherited. If you are female, then there's the additional hassle of having to protect it from the..er... elements, let's just say.

I have observed that people who work  primarily with their bodies as opposed to their minds, are either demi-gods or dregs of society, as illustrated below:

• Those who do remarkably well with their bodies, like sports stars or item girls, are highly sought after, coveted as national treasures and rewarded handsomely. 
• Those who are unable to do the same things just as well better have a degree of some sort.
• Those who have neither, face the terrible tragedy of having nothing but their bodies to live off.

Most do not use their bodies for anything  but for the consumption of food, the expulsion of food and other acts behind closed doors, and  the unfortunate necessity of having to heave their physical persons to places so that their mental persons may be usefully occupied. 

Sometimes I ponder over that confusing Biblical story of Adam and Eve being cursed by God with the awareness of their own bodies. How tremendously interesting that this discovery led them to- wait for it- shame!  Why of all things that? A poor body- their own! Everybody has one, and all human bodies do pretty much the same thing, so why on earth, according to the great book that so defines the world around us, should our first reactions to our own body be shame? Have you ever seen young children react to their discovery of themselves that way? Nope- not until  they are told it's shameful to lift your frock up around the drawing room when uncles and aunties have come over for dinner. So I have come to the conclusion that this is all learned and then propped up by many, many lies (yes, perhaps a late discovery).

So evidently, this shame and fear have been hijacked by the powers that be (Not God-at least not anymore. I mean market forces). Perpetrate an unrealistic image of what the body is supposed to look like, so that the ordinary folk, with sunspots and belly rolls develop a deep hatred for their own forms, born out of the fear that that (with curves liquefied on Photoshop and hair woven with needle & glue) is what their bodies should look like.

 Why fix imperfections? Who cares about imperfections? I've never cared about the physical imperfections of my loved ones and nor them of mine. The idea that the body's greatest achievement is to produce envy or desire in the watcher, is consistently reinforced in our daily experience, but this is a recently popularized, false notion. Anybody who has been to college is at least vaguely aware of this. But still you see, out of glass windows of gyms in malls, people jogging away to nowhere. Don't get me wrong. Physical activity and personal grooming is important for everyone and we should be thinking about ways to be more healthy and well presented in our individual lives. But body sculpting to achieve size zero- isn't that an unnecessary goal for say, a business analyst or a home maker?

So what is the real nature of this shame? Perhaps it is the shame of not knowing what our bodies are all about; and this not knowing also produces fear. The body's a mystery that needs to be solved but it is also a savage beast that the mind cannot really tame. It often acts independently of the person who inhabits it  - it gets sick, it has all kinds of strange compulsions, it brings forth the greatest pleasure and the worst kind of pain, it produces new bodies, it grows old, it dies - all of this regardless of the plans, the goals and even  the most basic desires of it's owner. The body is feared because it can never be completely controlled. And we currently live in a society obsessed with control.

 The body's purpose is to produce (and perhaps reproduce) and sustain the consciousness within, for as long as it's physics & chemistry allows. Our relationship with the body should be to maintain it in condition to do this job for as long as possible, because, lets face it, we are all drunk on the excellent experience of being alive.



Note: The title is a reference to Sir John Miller's WONDERFUL (of the Beyond the Fringe fame) series on the body by Dr. John Miller, produced by the BBC in the late 70s. The whole series is on youtube here.