Nemo

2008-06-23T16:29:00.000-07:00

Summer Rain

Just enough of rain
To bring the smell of silk
From the umbrellas
- A haiku by Richard Wright

2008-05-08T16:42:00.000-07:00

PEACE ?- For Whatever It's Worth

Alright, so this blog is solely being posted for the purpose of fighting back !! For the biggest child I have ever known - something has to be a favorite.. For us it is and has been fighting without rhyme or reason. Not that I am particularly peace-loving but c'mon! do I have to justify even my perfectly non-malicious sneeze!! (of course figuratively speaking). They ( and I do not know who they are, but) are absolutely right to say some things just do not change; especially when they deceptively insinuate a small change (and, for the record - 2 days late for the 18th and i said nothing!!!)

2008-04-06T14:58:00.000-07:00

Encounter

I saw you across the mist in that rainbow land. A kite hung low over my head for a few brief moments before it drifted away. It has been a million years since that chance meeting. I have not tried to look for you though you came across in many city-walks (in passing). When I hurdle under the heaters of an unknown hotel's entrance for a few seconds before continuing on my walk to nowhere and somewhere, I have felt a hand slip into mine.
Though there was nothing particularly noticeable about you, I have surprisingly found smatterings of you in billboards, in postal stamps, in vintage albums and T-shirt messages. Now the memory seems to be fading. All that remain are a bunch of rough lines and a discontinuous silhouette. Yet, I have not attempted to fill the gaps in with my imagination. I could... I would create the most beautiful and enchanting creature. Marvelous in every sense of the word; a heavenly body with a slanted smile. But where would I go to find the most curious flaws? The smirk in place of a smile. That yellow ochre that lingers in my head among all your other blacks and whites. Those glorious imperfections that shone through the mist that afternoon. And without those colors the picture would that be of someone else. Without those out of sync noisy notes, the music will be strange. Beautiful alright but not the same.
So now, when I meet myself in a different world in a different time continuum, I will close my eyes and will jump to reach for that bright green kite that will be hanging low over my head. So nothing lingers as memory, but just the essence within that can not be lost.

2008-03-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

Oh Lord! We Pray For A Better Sunday

So, I have a thousand things to take care of. A decision to make that I have been fussing over last 5 days. I need to call my brother who is mad at me 'coz I have not called for years now. A lame bagel for breakfast on Sunday morning. I spilled coffee on the floor. **Deep breaths**
But, NO GOD, NO... I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!! Arsenal lost to Chelsea in what was arguably the most important match in the entire premier league... Arghhhhhhhhhhhhh ... Yes, this is it!! I just quit - signing off till I recover from my what currently seems like endless chaotic depression :-(

2008-02-24T12:49:00.000-08:00

Innocence et al.

A very dear friend told me today, " you should really consider moving back to India for you are losing the oh-so-you innocence here". Huh?? I smiled and joked that he just doesn't find me cute any more since he started seeing that skinny girl from west village who wears designer clothes!

On my walk to the subway, I thought - how does a place have anything to do with one's innocence! Or does it? But, I still am friends with the same/similar friends, like the same songs, books and need my solitary long walks just as much I always have. I know, I know - that doesn't prove my innocence (Gee! what have I done wrong? :-D), but I am trying to show the "K"s of my life.
Is it that I am getting too literal here? I clearly think differently from the way I used to when I was thirteen. But, that's called "growing up", isn't it? Hmm, I am becoming more "worldly-wise" or so I would like think. And that, I must admit, was not the most frequent prediction people made about me. And, from that perspective, loss of innocence is not an option really, but more an eventuality of adulthood. But then , may be he does have a point. May be I have just forgotten to find the innocence for me here. May be it has nothing to do growing up or survival. It could be that, just the way our taste, inclinations and personality evolves, so does each of our innocence. Does a different earth beneath your feet and a different sky above your head take away your innocence then or is it something else?

2008-01-23T01:07:00.000-08:00

Afreen!

It lit up a thousand stars and I was left wondering what struck me. Droplets of innocence fell on the ground. I gasped to let out a whiff of brewing happiness inside me. He chuckled a little more. A perfect, perfect smile.. ear to ear.. pink cheeks smothered into a pair of rather wet, pink lips. No teeth whatsoever were in sight.. Just a set of pink gums - vehemently declaring his amusement! Oh, what a funny place this world is, he must be thinking. At the end of his chuckle, he drooled some more and winked at me. Not so much a wink, more like a squeeze of both his eyelids at the same time. I half-smiled and asked with my eyes - what are you so happy about? Think he understood, looked puzzled, may be even a little reprimanded. Uh oh, I was starting to feel a small pang of guilt. Why would I do such a thing when I always knew babies understand what you say with your eyes(And they do!). Just then, from under the blue hood, he stuck his tongue out and flashed his pink gums again in full defiance! I closed my eyes for a split second to store the picture. (I store happy pictures in my head for bad days and low points). Snap, shut and I started boarding my flight to India (yipieee)

2008-01-02T08:14:00.000-08:00

"Leave Me A Message" - Oh, how I Love It!

Yes I had a message last night and I am to return a call. State of denial, that lasted for the whole day and up until ten minutes ago.

*Oh Darn it! May be I should just dial and get over with it.

*The next minute - hold your horses, Barnali! What's the matter with you? Calm down and take some time to collect your thought.

*I mean, haven't I been doing that for last 13 hours and change. :O

I performed a little stress release exercise ( it works! - just curl and uncurl your fingers). Alright, deep breathe. My heart is out of control and hands are sweating. Frankly, this is embarrassing - thank God, there is no picture transmission through phone (yet).

Dialing: 796-779-4932 (OF COURSE! This is a made up number, duh!)

Deadly silence.. *Ughhh, how I miss the under appreciated friendly automated voice companion (Thank you for calling Citibank. Please listen to the following menu and make your selection...)

Ring..(Please don't pick up)

Ring..Ring..Ring..(Pleaseeeee! No)

Ring..Ring..Ring..

Ring (Wait,I am actually feeling bad that there is a chance this call might not happen?!?!)..

Click.. Hello, he says

(Oh NO! Omg, my heart's in my mouth) Brief Pause. Breathe!

I hear my utterly adorable, calm and composed voice go - "Hey, this is me. Whaddup?" (What the hell was that!! this is supposed to be a serious conversation!! What was that "whaddup"?? )

2007-12-16T19:45:00.000-08:00

Pray For A Song

And then one day, when someone lights up all the stars one by one, we will stand under the inky sky and find our lost tune. A thousand suns will fill us with their brilliance. As the sonata plays, we will soar into the air with wings of silver. Each one of us will be free then. Free of every darkness that surrounds us. Everyone, man or animal, earth, snow, air or water; every element of this cosmos will join in the score and sing in such harmony that even the lifeless would be filled with a feeling of an absoluteness. No petty happiness nor material sorrow, a strong and indescribable sense of pure freedom. There will be no miserable pieces on this earth. Fractures will heal and we will be whole. And when we reach the crescendo; in that melody every chain will break; every page will burn and when empires silently come crashing down, witches will wail. Amidst that destruction, when you will take my hand in yours, there will be no tears in our eyes. When the music fades, under a silver tarpaulin, we will set up a doll house in the shadow of an unscathed moon.

Until then, believe that day will come and hum the tune on.

2007-12-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

Sands Of A Foreign Land And Some Of My Own Sorrow

Today was another usual lazy Sunday in New York. There wasn't really anything to speak about. I lay most of the day in my bed trying to work a little but just mostly surfed the Internet, something that I do not get to do for the rest of the week. Then around two in the afternoon, I turned on the TV. After shuffling through few channels, I started watching this documentary on HBO about the current state of Darfur, Sudan. I do not write unless I feel compelled to do so. And, in all honesty, this documentary shook me to the extent that on an absolutely normal and event-free Sunday, I sat down and questioned so many things inside and around me. I would really want everyone who visits my blog to watch this documentary even if at this point, this issue seems cliched and overstressed to you.

Sand and Sorrow

I do not want to sound charitable and certainly do not want to preach. But when you watch something like this, nothing seems to make sense in your perfectly cozy city apartment life. Suddenly I was staring at a reality that was light years beyond all my sensible and rational understanding of the ways of the world and human existence. It is utterly shameful (to put it mildly) that all of us who do not have the excuse of ignorance continue to go on with our lives like nothing wrong is going on in this world and even if it is then it's worth as much of our precious attention as a bad movie that we just happened to have watched.

And then when I was done feeling insignificant and irrelevant and ineffective; I sat down and wondered to myself - beyond political and economic agendas, whether such horrific inhuman activities go unpunished, even unnoticed(have been historically) because the world, at heart, is racist (said, Rukun); or because we, as human beings ( and there is no end to the ramblings about how advanced, intelligent and accomplished a species we are), have just failed to emotionally evolve enough to be able to empathize, get affected by and act upon incidents that happen beyond five blocks of our neighborhood!! The worst - may be both are true.

2007-10-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

???

Do people change when they change their houses? Do dreams change when you sleep among different walls and smell a different paint? New cobwebs outside the window ; different mosaic on the floor - does change of pattern changes a little of you? Buildings after buildings lace the sky line - stright lined, round and pyramidal. In such a precise, geometric space; do associations change when we move from one rectangle to another?
After changing paths, context, shoreline and weather; just curious - because we tear our roofs apart, does that change our skies too?

2007-09-24T18:38:00.000-07:00

CLUTTER

If you think really hard (which one can only do at 10:30pm after 15hrs of work), you would notice how cluttered every part of our existence is. To the pitiable extent that I have been debating over whether I want to be a pretty but nagging old woman or do I prefer being ugly happy granny for the last hour and a half! Now, this in itself is a toughie, but I am quite sure if only I could concentrate on the problem, I could certainly satisfy myself with a very well reasoned, rational choice for whatever it's worth. Instead, I have been think of Altoids, rush hour3, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 20-20 cricket match and all other kind of completely unrelated, distracting stuff (rather annoyed with myself!). And the sound of vacuum cleaner from the next room is not helping either.

In my mind, insanity is well in vogue in our world. And an inevitable by-product - clutter. It's fashionably inserted into the art on our wall, our couture clothing, our bookshelves and coffee cups. For the most part, I, in fact like it. It's easier to live in the noise - less intimidating and certainly less painful if you think of it. But sometimes, especially when I am faced with the most intriguing which-kind-of-old woman complexity, all I ask for is a wee bit of order !!

2007-07-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

Silent Argument

There was a time when I used to toy with colourful thoughts. Thoughts of no significance; some aimless, some wistful and some well, just happy thoughts. Now I hang floral curtains on my windows. You may dismiss me as boring or you could just say that I have matured.

2007-05-17T07:34:00.000-07:00

Baby Step

RBI allowed CDS trading in India last night. As geeky as it sounds, I am excited about it. :) Complete story here

2007-05-14T17:13:00.000-07:00

Living it up

So I am home sick. Off from work on a MONDAY!! well, after I spent half the day brooding over how I was feeling useless etc, I finally have decided to just let myself be. The process of "being" started with making myself a chicken soup and sitting down to blog. I have wanted to speak about a number of things past several days. What I am going to do is break this entire post into several small (shall we say) postlets.

A:
Have you ever felt helplessly, joyously destroyed under the spell of a piece of music? That is probably the closest description of how I felt sitting in that concert (Pt. Shiv Ku. Sharma and Ustaad Zaakir Husain). It was as if parts of my being liberated themselves out into the space. As the maestros weaved dreams with sound, a trance fell upon the town hall. It's strange how someone else's creative energy incites vitality within us. There are only few moments in life when you feel the complete truth and gravity of your being, when you can see the potentials of life in their entirety, when you can truly feel both unbearable, monumental sadness and boundless pure ecstasy within you. And the effect is annihilating. In my opinion, for sound to have such surreal impact on humans is almost primeval and therefore, of course fundamental. Ever wondered how would the primitive man must have felt when he heard the roaring thunder bolts or when the moody wind spoke softly in his ears in the middle of the night? That evening, as they spun magic with their instruments, figures formed and slowly faded away as music died. As I helplessly surrendered, they smiled at each other and carried me away to a land that I somehow knew well, just had not visited in a long long time!

An:
Some random night, I watched a rather unsettling documentary about children convicted of and serving for serious crimes. The documentary showed specifically those American children that have been sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. As I sat there stunned and wondered about both how these events could possibly have taken place and how the legal system is dealing with it in a completely irrational manner, a funny thing happened. I flipped the news paper lying on my lap. And I saw the life size picture of a very grim Paris Hilton and the news of her imprisonment (for driving without license for the umpteenth time)!!! I don't know why but just couldn't help but laugh.
The:
Quite selfish, but true - I remember and need my family the most when I am sick. I miss my Ma sit by me and run her fingers through my hair. I miss her laughing at me for I fuss over the smallest discomforts. My little brother on most of those occasions is quite at loss. So he just goes about doing his own thing, except he comes into my room every now and then to just do his signature funny skip and jump to amuse me and then says "beechara peela ta keechi kahuni aau" (meaning poor child is sick and she doesn't even say anything/ fight now). Though best part about being sick in those days was that there was no curfew on TV-watching time and I could very conveniently decline to eat anything that remotely resembled our highest-frequency-dinner-dish of "boiled and sauteed mixed vegetables" (without my mom's slightest opposition) !!! It's weird that I remember now; for some odd reason, even when I was a very little child, no one else but my father always got the responsibility of making me have my medicines, especially the ones I needed to take at night. And he had devised special and rather creative ways to trick me into having those, for instance - mixing sugar in my syrup and since I couldn't swallow pills as a baby, it was first churned and meticulously melted into water in a spoon and then given to me along with firm promises of "Gems" chocolate or some such highly valuable food item in the immediate future or with "Rasna"( a sort of orange punch available in India)!!.
Now, I act strong over the telephone, pop some Tylenol and get into a bad mood for feeling sick when all I want is crawl into my bed and shout "MAAAA!! can you come here for a minute please!!"

2007-04-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

Utterly Un-inspired!

This just had to be the day when I thought of writing something after what feels like a century! It's a day of no story at all. No rhythm around or within. I tried standing out in the terrace to feel the wind. But even that had no scent. Where did all the stars go? Only city lights swim past my car window. An overwhelming variety of colors forming liquid figures. A choked up drizzle blurred my vision alright, but didn't soak through my hair enough to touch my soul. Humph! All I can think of at this hour of the night is if I were to start a new painting, I will begin with an old wooden bridge. How utterly uninspiring!!

2007-02-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

Mona Lisa Eyes
Handful of old colours and the heady smell of earth. A thousand stories in her eyes but none of them are loud. A light wood fire beneath her lids. Some smoke float in the white sea. An unknown and strange beauty. Helpless words beg her mercy. Maestros offer her their glorious tunes; some their splash of brush. She pulls her veil, carefully places an inch of that golden cloth in between her teeth so it doesn't slip past her head to reveal too much. Oblivious of her own enigma, she adds another scoopful of absolute normalcy to her life. Price of tomato has gone up, new sugar is not sweet enough, her youngest has a little fever; in the afternoon sun, she wonders when will the monsoon come. Every morning she wears her pride in a circle of red and every night she locks away some more glass pieces of turbulence in her tired eyes. Amidst her golds, her reds,her jingle of bangles and sets of keys; she builds a small world. No questions asked, no hands raised. With each sunset, she adds another block of meaning to her existence. An uncomplicated life, more like a lullaby. In folds of her Saree, her household snoozes safely. Hazy shades of innocent dreams lace her lashes. Some broken, some still alive. But no dream so achingly adamant that hurts the heart. Her pain is enriching unlike the pain that lives in multi-story buildings that leaves you bitter and empty.
A small dot on a huge canvas, would you trade your rainbow for this? May be not. Too plain, too bland, too simple. I agree! But somehow, I wish we had the assurance that lie in those eyes; like someone is in peace with herself and her world.

2007-01-25T08:49:00.000-08:00

For Appu!

A poem by Gopal Das Neeraj that I think deserves a space in this bog as well as a read by anyone who understands Hindi.

Courtesy - Aparajita, girl who has spoken to me about Hindi Literature more than any one else and much of my "very little" knowledge of the same is credited to her.

2007-01-20T16:46:00.000-08:00

See you!

Rapid footsteps fall all around me. Heat in the middle of winter and I sniff a moist air that feels so familiar. An elderly woman is sweeping the corridor. Her nose ring is brilliant in the afternoon sun. I am measuring my shadow as I go past her. Red Letters on the white washed walls - "This is your Airport. Please Don't Spit." I am dragging the luggage cart (free! didn't pay a penny for it) towards the conveyor belt at the Customs.

Madam ji. Chhod do, main daal dunga. Oh, this is too big a suitcase for a female! For that matter, a bag of any size is too big for women here. I love it! I feebly thank him as I collect my bag at the other end and walk to the exit. Happy faces waiting for someone of their own, salwar kurtas, Gandhi's face on 100 rupees note and a faint smell of Pond's talcum powder.... I am wondering why was I away.

O didi, flower le lo. BeauTifoool flower. Aapke like very beauTiful flower didi! Bees rupees main lagayega aapko. Please take didi. She wore a deep blue dress. Her hazel brown eyes were squinted in the high sun. She was still speaking to me in her broken English as she placed a bunch of yellow daisies in my hands. I bought those flowers.

I left the airport in one of those black and yellow taxis with my suitcase jutting out of the trunk at the back and held in place by rope. A bill board in front of me had an Indian bride in her complete attire saying " Kaas mere saath aisa na hota" - promo of a new TV soap opera. Behind me, the same blue dressed girl was now talking to a couple under the sign of Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport.
Sir beauTiful flower, Sir ji. Aapke galfriend ke liye Sir. Please take.....

[[Some moments are so fluid that I can't hold them and frame a picture. But they brush past so effortlessly without the slightest gung-ho and I stumble upon snatches of my identity. Adequate in their impact on me, such moments drift away from the memory board like the image I see every morning in the mirror when I stand before it. I do not shriek in joy, not even a customary nod. But there is a comfort in meeting yourself; a plain unawaited chance meeting and everything in my world oddly seems to be alright.]]

2006-12-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

I Was

I live in a church yard and I talk to the ghosts. Who am I, I do not ask. I can not ask. I weep all day and I laugh at night. Laugh at all of you. And when I am tired, I sit on the broken stone wall under the weak moon and laugh at myself. I once painted the walls of this chapel. I even painted the ceiling with a deep azure and soft silver. I carved every petal of those roses that lie beneath his feet. No I wasn't forgetful. I also added thorns. I poured my heart into my art. I used to sit hours in front of that thin-limbed human form carved on white stone.

One day I fell asleep on the floor and dreamt of a far away land. Of an old man with long white beard. He spoke to me about my children that I hadn't met. He even told me their heights, colour of their eyes. He said all was well and they didn't miss me at all. When I woke up it was mid day and someone had laid a bunch of fresh gardenias by my side. That night, I bought a knife from a gypsy woman. I wanted to carve my daughter on one of the walls. I felt helpless as I remembered that I forgot to tell the old man to name her "Lydia".

When I returned to the chapel I could hear loud noise. There were several men. They were beautiful. With their tanned skin and sculpted body in the golden light, they looked like angels. With their hammers, they were tearing down my work. They took away my every night under the candle light. They defiled every single day. I stood speechless. They were painting the ceiling crimson. I could still see some patches of my azure sky lurking in the corner, dying easy with every stroke of brush. When they saw me, they smirked. Told me to leave them alone. And then the most beautiful of them all came forth and said he would let me save just one thing for a bargain. I could taste my tears as I spoke. I wanted to save a patch of ceiling that was still mine. He smiled a sad smile and said - " Offer me your best". I looked at that man on the wooden cross in the middle of all this mayhem. I knew what to do. I knew it all the time. I took out the knife and cut open my heart. I offered him that bloody, palpitating ugly mass of flesh in my hand. As they climbed down from the roof leaving my little sky there I was wondering what all you god-fearing folks would think of the disfigured ceiling when you look up in your prayer. I hope you just look away. I felt weak and I did what I had never done. I touched him. I touched the white stone. His feet, his hands, my blood smearing into his. But he was cold! I didn't want to argue if it was just I who couldn't feel any more or is it him that is a stone. I never stepped inside again.

There is a hush that follows me everywhere I go. I am the heart-less and I sold my soul. I want you to stay and perhaps even want to tell you something. But I have no story. I don't even have a song.

2006-12-24T17:41:00.000-08:00

Christmas Toast

Hmmm.. So here is an aimless post to Christmas. Here is to everyone who has ever believed in Santa and has spent atleast one sleepless night waiting for that stocking to be slipped through the door. Finally, thank God for all the love that I have that make me go on, for all the love that I have lost that made me strong and made me learn and for all the love that is yet to come :-)

To the beautiful world, Merry Christmas!

2006-12-13T06:54:00.000-08:00

Orhan Pamuk's 2006 Nobel Acceptance Speech

I stumbled upon the following in "The Hindu" website. And thought of putting it up here for anyone who has ever written anything or aspires to do so. Many things can inspire but few make you understand the "why" and this is one of them!

My Father's Suitcase.

Two years before his death, my father gave me a small suitcase filled with his writings, manuscripts and notebooks. Assuming his usual joking, mocking air, he told me he wanted me to read them after he was gone, by which he meant after he died. 'Just take a look,' he said, looking slightly embarrassed. 'See if there's anything inside that you can use. Maybe after I'm gone you can make a selection and publish it.

'We were in my study, surrounded by books. My father was searching for a place to set down the suitcase, wandering back and forth like a man who wished to rid himself of a painful burden. In the end, he deposited it quietly in an unobtrusive corner. It was a shaming moment that neither of us ever forgot, but once it had passed and we had gone back into our usual roles, taking life lightly, our joking, mocking personas took over and we relaxed. We talked as we always did, about the trivial things of everyday life, and Turkey's neverending political troubles, and my father's mostly failed business ventures, without feeling too much sorrow. I remember that after my father left, I spent several days walking back and forth past the suitcase without once touching it. I was already familiar with this small, black, leather suitcase, and its lock, and its rounded corners. My father would take it with him on short trips and sometimes use it to carry documents to work. I remembered that when I was a child, and my father came home from a trip, I would open this little suitcase and rummage through his things, savouring the scene of cologne and foreign countries. This suitcase was a familiar friend, a powerful reminder of my childhood, my past, but now I couldn't even touch it. Why? No doubt it was because of the mysterious weight of its contents.

I am now going to speak of this weight's meaning. It is what a person creates when he shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and retires to a corner to express his thoughts – that is, the meaning of literature. When I did touch my father's suitcase, I still could not bring myself to open it, but I did know what was inside some of those notebooks. I had seen my father writing things in a few of them. This was not the first time I had heard of the heavy load inside the suitcase. My father had a large library; in his youth, in the late 1940s, he had wanted to be an Istanbul poet, and had translated Valery into Turkish, but he had not wanted to live the sort of life that came with writing poetry in a poor country with few readers. My father's father – my grandfather – had been a wealthy business man; my father had led a comfortable life as a child and a young man, and he had no wish to endure hardship for the sake of literature, for writing. He loved life with all its beauties – this I understood. The first thing that kept me distant from the contents of my father's suitcase was, of course, the fear that I might not like what I read. Because my father knew this, he had taken the precaution of acting as if he did not take its contents seriously. After working as a writer for 25 years, it pained me to see this. But I did not even want to be angry at my father for failing to take literature seriously enough ... My real fear, the crucial thing that I did not wish to know or discover, was the possibility that my father might be a good writer. I couldn't open my father's suitcase because I feared this. Even worse, I couldn't even admit this myself openly. If true and great literature emerged from my father's suitcase, I would have to acknowledge that inside my father there existed an entirely different man. This was a frightening possibility. Because even at my advanced age I wanted my father to be only my father – not a writer.

A writer is someone who spends years patiently trying to discover the second being inside him, and the world that makes him who he is: when I speak of writing, what comes first to my mind is not a novel, a poem, or literary tradition, it is a person who shuts himself up in a room, sits down at a table, and alone, turns inward; amid its shadows, he builds a new world with words. This man – or this woman – may use a typewriter, profit from the ease of a computer, or write with a pen on paper, as I have done for 30 years. As he writes, he can drink tea or coffee, or smoke cigarettes. From time to time he may rise from his table to look out through the window at the children playing in the street, and, if he is lucky, at trees and a view, or he can gaze out at a black wall. He can write poems, plays, or novels, as I do. All these differences come after the crucial task of sitting down at the table and patiently turning inwards. To write is to turn this inward gaze into words, to study the world into which that person passes when he retires into himself, and to do so with patience, obstinacy, and joy. As I sit at my table, for days, months, years, slowly adding new words to the empty page, I feel as if I am creating a new world, as if I am bringing into being that other person inside me, in the same way someone might build a bridge or a dome, stone by stone. The stones we writers use are words. As we hold them in our hands, sensing the ways in which each of them is connected to the others, looking at them sometimes from afar, sometimes almost caressing them with our fingers and the tips of our pens, weighing them, moving them around, year in and year out, patiently and hopefully, we create new worlds.

The writer's secret is not inspiration – for it is never clear where it comes from – it is his stubbornness, his patience. That lovely Turkish saying – to dig a well with a needle – seems to me to have been said with writers in mind. In the old stories, I love the patience of Ferhat, who digs through mountains for his love – and I understand it, too. In my novel, My Name is Red, when I wrote about the old Persian miniaturists who had drawn the same horse with the same passion for so many years, memorising each stroke, that they could recreate that beautiful horse even with their eyes closed, I knew I was talking about the writing profession, and my own life. If a writer is to tell his own story – tell it slowly, and as if it were a story about other people – if he is to feel the power of the story rise up inside him, if he is to sit down at a table and patiently give himself over to this art – this craft – he must first have been given some hope. The angel of inspiration (who pays regular visits to some and rarely calls on others) favours the hopeful and the confident, and it is when a writer feels mostly lonely, when he feels most doubtful about his efforts, his dreams, and the value of his writing – when he thinks his story is only his story – it is at such moments that the angel chooses to reveal to him stories, images and dreams that will draw out the world he wishes to build. If I think back on the books to which I have devoted my entire life, I am most surprised by those moments when I have felt as if the sentences, dreams, and pages that have made me so ecstatically happy have not come from my own imagination – that another power has found them and generously presented them to me.

I was afraid of opening my father's suitcase and reading his notebooks because I knew that he would not tolerate the difficulties I had endured, that it was not solitude he loved but mixing with friends, crowds, salons, jokes, company. But later my thoughts took a different turn. These thoughts, these dreams of renunciation and patience, were prejudices I had derived from my own life and my own experience as a writer. There were plenty of brilliant writers who wrote surrounded by crowds and family life, in the glow of company and happy chatter. In addition, my father had, when we were young, tired of the monotony of family life, and left us to go to Paris, where – like so many writers – he'd sat in his hotel room filling notebooks. I knew, too, that some of those very notebooks were in this suitcase, because during the years before he brought it to me, my father had finally begun to talk to me about that period in his life. He spoke about those years even when I was a child, but he would not mention his vulnerabilities, his dreams of becoming a writer, or the questions of identity that had plagued him in his hotel room. He would tell me instead about all the times he'd seen Sartre on the pavements of Paris, about the books he'd read and the films he'd seen, all with the elated sincerity of someone imparting very important news. When I became a writer, I never forgot that it was partly thanks to the fact that I had a father who would talk of world writers so much more than he spoke of pashas or great religious leaders. So perhaps I had to read my father's notebooks with this in mind, and remembering how indebted I was to his large library. I had to bear in mind that when he was living with us, my father, like me, enjoyed being alone with his books and his thoughts – and not pay too much attention to the literary quality of his writing. But as I gazed so anxiously at the suitcase my father had bequeathed me, I also felt that this was the very thing I would not be able to do. My father would sometimes stretch out on the divan in front of his books, abandon the book in his hand, or the magazine and drift off into a dream, lose himself for a longest time in his thoughts. When I saw on his face an expression so very different from the one he wore amid the joking, teasing, and bickering of family life – when I saw the first signs of an inward gaze – I would, especially during my childhood and my early youth, understand, with trepidation, that he was discontent.

Now, so many years later, I know that this discontent is the basic trait that turns a person into a writer. To become a writer, patience and toil are not enough: we must first feel compelled to escape crowds, company, the stuff of ordinary, everyday life, and shut ourselves up in a room. We wish for patience and hope so that we can create a deep world in our writing. But the desire to shut oneself up in a room is what pushes us into action. The precursor of this sort of independent writer – who reads his books to his heart's content, and who, by listening only to the voice of his own conscience, disputes with other's words, who, by entering into conversation with his books develops his own thoughts, and his own world – was most certainly Montaigne, in the earliest days of modern literature. Montaigne was a writer to whom my father returned often, a writer he recommended to me. I would like to see myself as belonging to the tradition of writers who – wherever they are in the world, in the East or in the West – cut themselves off from society, and shut themselves up with their books in their room. The starting point of true literature is the man who shuts himself up in his room with his books. But once we shut ourselves away, we soon discover that we are not as alone as we thought. We are in the company of the words of those who came before us, of other peoples' stories, other people's books, other people's words, the thing we call tradition.

I believe literature to be the most valuable hoard that humanity has gathered in its quest to understand itself. Societies, tribes, and peoples grow more intelligent, richer, and more advanced as they pay attention to the troubled words of their authors, and, as we all know, the burning of books and the denigration of writers are both signals that dark and improvident times are upon us. But literature is never just a national concern. The writer who shuts himself up in a room and first goes on a journey inside himself will, over the years, discover literature's eternal rule: he must have the artistry to tell his own stories as if they are other people's stories, and to tell other people's stories as if they were his own, for this is what literature is. But we must first travel through other peoples' stories and books. My father had a good library – 1500 volumes in all – more than enough for a writer. By the age of 22, I had perhaps not read them all, but I was familiar with each book, – I knew which were important, which were light but easy to read, which were classics, which an essential part of any education, which were forgettable but amusing accounts of local history, and which French authors my father rated very highly. Sometimes I would look at this library from a distance and imagine that one day, in a different house, I would build my own library, an even better library – build myself a world. When I looked at my father's library from afar, it seemed to me to be a small picture of the real world. But this was a world seen from our own corner, from Istanbul. The library was evidence of this. My father had built his library from his trips abroad, mostly with books from Paris and America, but also with books bought from the shops that sold books in foreign languages in the 40s and 50s and Istanbul's old and new booksellers, whom I also knew.

My world is mixture of the local – the national – and the West. In the 70s, I, too, began, somewhat ambitiously, to build my own library. I had not quite decided to become a writer – as I related in Istanbul, I had come to feel that I would not, after all, become a painter, but I was not sure what path my life would take. There was inside me a relentless curiosity, a hope-driven desire to read and learn, but at the same time I felt that my life was in some way lacking, that I would not be able to live like others. Part of this feeling was connected to what I felt when I gazed at my father's library – to be living far from the centre of things, as all of us who lived in Istanbul in those days were made to feel, that feeling of living in the provinces. There was another reason for feeling anxious and somehow lacking, for I knew only too well that I lived in a country that showed little interest in its artists – be they painters or writers – and that gave them no hope. In the 70s, when I would take the money my father gave me and greedily buy faded, dusty, dog-eared books from Istanbul's old booksellers, I would be as affected by the pitiable state of these second hand bookstores – and by the despairing dishevelment of the poor, bedraggled booksellers who laid out their wares on roadsides, in mosque courtyards, and in the niches of crumbling walls – as I was by their books. As for my place in the world – in life, as in literature, my basic feeling was that I was 'not in the centre'. In the centre of the world, there was a life richer and more exciting than our own, and with all of Istanbul, all of Turkey, I was outside it. Today I think that I share this feeling with most people in the world. In the same way, there was a world literature, and its centre, too, was very far away from me. Actually what I had in mind was Western, not world literature, and we Turks were outside it. My father's library was evidence of this. At one end, there were Istanbul's books – our literature, our local world, in all its beloved detail – and at the other end were the books from this other, Western, world, to which our own bore no resemblance, to which our lack of resemblance gave us both pain and hope. To write, to read, was like leaving one world to find consolation in the other world's otherness, the strange and the wondrous. I felt that my father had read novels to escape his life and flee to the West – just as I would do later. Or it seemed to me that books in those days were things we picked up to escape our own culture, which we found so lacking. It wasn't just by reading that we left our Istanbul lives to travel West – it was by writing, too. To fill those notebooks of his, my father had gone to Paris, shut himself up in his room, and then brought his writings back to Turkey. As I gazed at my father's suitcase, it seemed to me that this was what was causing me disquiet. After working in a room for 25 years to survive as a writer in Turkey, it galled me to see my father hide his deep thoughts inside this suitcase, to act as if writing was work that had to be done in secret, far from the eyes of society, the state, the people. Perhaps this was the main reason why I felt angry at my father for not taking literature as seriously as I did. Actually I was angry at my father because he had not led a life like mine, because he had never quarrelled with his life, and had spent his life happily laughing with his friends and his loved ones. But part of me knew that I could also say that I was not so much 'angry' as 'jealous', that the second word was more accurate, and this, too, made me uneasy. That would be when I would ask myself in my usual scornful, angry voice: 'What is happiness?' Was happiness thinking that I lived a deep life in that lonely room? Or was happiness leading a comfortable life in society, believing in the same things as everyone else, or acting as if you did? Was it happiness, or unhappiness, to go through life writing in secret, while seeming to be in harmony with all around one? But these were overly ill-tempered questions. Wherever had I got this idea that the measure of a good life was happiness? People, papers, everyone acted as if the most important measure of a life was happiness. Did this alone not suggest that it might be worth trying to find out if the exact opposite was true? After all, my father had run away from his family so many times – how well did I know him, and how well could I say I understood his disquiet? So this was what was driving me when I first opened my father's suitcase. Did my father have a secret, an unhappiness in his life about which I knew nothing, something he could only endure by pouring it into his writing?

As soon as I opened the suitcase, I recalled its scent of travel, recognised several notebooks, and noted that my father had shown them to me years earlier, but without dwelling on them very long. Most of the notebooks I now took into my hands he had filled when he had left us and gone to Paris as a young man. Whereas I, like so many writers I admired – writers whose biographies I had read – wished to know what my father had written, and what he had thought, when he was the age I was now. It did not take me long to realise that I would find nothing like that here. What caused me most disquiet was when, here and there in my father's notebooks, I came upon a writerly voice. This was not my father's voice, I told myself; it wasn't authentic, or at least it did not belong to the man I'd known as my father. Underneath my fear that my father might not have been my father when he wrote, was a deeper fear: the fear that deep inside I was not authentic, that I would find nothing good in my father's writing, this increased my fear of finding my father to have been overly influenced by other writers and plunged me into a despair that had afflicted me so badly when I was young, casting my life, my very being, my desire to write, and my work into question. During my first ten years as a writer, I felt these anxieties more deeply, and even as I fought them off, I would sometimes fear that one day, I would have to admit to defeat – just as I had done with painting – and succumbing to disquiet, give up novel writing, too. I have already mentioned the two essential feelings that rose up in me as I closed my father's suitcase and put it away: the sense of being marooned in the provinces, and the fear that I lacked authenticity. This was certainly not the first time they had made themselves felt. For years I had, in my reading and my writing, been studying, discovering, deepening these emotions, in all their variety and unintended consequences, their nerve endings, their triggers, and their many colours. Certainly my spirits had been jarred by the confusions, the sensitivities and the fleeting pains that life and books had sprung on me, most often as a young man. But it was only by writing books that I came to a fuller understanding of the problems of authenticity (as in My Name is Red and The Black Book) and the problems of life on the periphery (as in Snow and Istanbul). For me, to be a writer is to acknowledge the secret wounds that we carry inside us, the wounds so secret that we ourselves are barely aware of them, and to patiently explore them, know them, illuminate them, to own these pains and wounds, and to make them a conscious part of our spirits and our writing. A writer talks of things that everyone knows but does not know they know. To explore this knowledge, and to watch it grow, is a pleasurable thing; the reader is visiting a world at once familiar and miraculous. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end to hone his craft – to create a world – if he uses his secret wounds as his starting point, he is, whether he knows it or not, putting a great faith in humanity. My confidence comes from the belief that all human beings resemble each other, that others carry wounds like mine – that they will therefore understand. All true literature rises from this childish, hopeful certainty that all people resemble each other. When a writer shuts himself up in a room for years on end, with this gesture he suggests a single humanity, a world without a centre. But as can be seen from my father's suitcase and the pale colours of our lives in Istanbul, the world did have a centre, and it was far away from us. In my books I have described in some detail how this basic fact evoked a Checkovian sense of provinciality, and how, by another route, it led to my questioning my authenticity. I know from experience that the great majority of people on this earth live with these same feelings, and that many suffer from an even deeper sense of insufficiency, lack of security and sense of degradation, than I do. Yes, the greatest dilemmas facing humanity are still landlessness, homelessness, and hunger ... But today our televisions and newspapers tell us about these fundamental problems more quickly and more simply than literature can ever do.

What literature needs most to tell and investigate today are humanity's basic fears: the fear of being left outside, and the fear of counting for nothing, and the feelings of worthlessness that come with such fears; the collective humiliations, vulnerabilities, slights, grievances, sensitivities, and imagined insults, and the nationalist boasts and inflations that are their next of kind ... Whenever I am confronted by such sentiments, and by the irrational, overstated language in which they are usually expressed, I know they touch on a darkness inside me. We have often witnessed peoples, societies and nations outside the Western world – and I can identify with them easily – succumbing to fears that sometimes lead them to commit stupidities, all because of their fears of humiliation and their sensitivities. I also know that in the West – a world with which I can identify with the same ease – nations and peoples taking an excessive pride in their wealth, and in their having brought us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and Modernism, have, from time to time, succumbed to a self-satisfaction that is almost as stupid. This means that my father was not the only one, that we all give too much importance to the idea of a world with a centre. Whereas the thing that compels us to shut ourselves up to write in our rooms for years on end is a faith in the opposite; the belief that one day our writings will be read and understood, because people all the world over resemble each other. But this, as I know from my own and my father's writing, is a troubled optimism, scarred by the anger of being consigned to the margins, of being left outside. The love and hate that Dostoyevsky felt towards the West all his life – I have felt this too, on many occasions. But if I have grasped an essential truth, if I have cause for optimism, it is because I have travelled with this great writer through his love-hate relationship with the West, to behold the other world he has built on the other side. All writers who have devoted their lives to this task know this reality: whatever our original purpose, the world that we create after years and years of hopeful writing, will, in the end, move to other very different places. It will take us far away from the table at which we have worked with sadness or anger, take us to the other side of that sadness and anger, into another world.

Could my father have not reached such a world himself? Like the land that slowly begins to take shape, slowly rising from the mist in all its colours like an island after a long sea journey, this other world enchants us. We are as beguiled as the western travellers who voyaged from the south to behold Istanbul rising from the mist. At the end of a journey begun in hope and curiosity, there lies before them a city of mosques and minarets, a medley of houses, streets, hills, bridges, and slopes, an entire world. Seeing it, we wish to enter into this world and lose ourselves inside it, just as we might a book. After sitting down at a table because we felt provincial, excluded, on the margins, angry, or deeply melancholic, we have found an entire world beyond these sentiments. What I feel now is the opposite of what I felt as a child and a young man: for me the centre of the world is Istanbul. This is not just because I have lived there all my life, but because, for the last 33 years, I have been narrating its streets, its bridges, its people, its dogs, its houses, its mosques, its fountains, its strange heroes, its shops, its famous characters, its dark spots, its days and its nights, making them part of me, embracing them all. A point arrived when this world I had made with my own hands, this world that existed only in my head, was more real to me than the city in which I actually lived. That was when all these people and streets, objects and buildings would seem to begin to talk amongst themselves, and begin to interact in ways I had not anticipated, as if they lived not just in my imagination or my books, but for themselves. This world that I had created like a man digging a well with a needle would then seem truer than all else. My father might also have discovered this kind of happiness during the years he spent writing, I thought as I gazed at my father's suitcase: I should not prejudge him. I was so grateful to him, after all: he'd never been a commanding, forbidding, overpowering, punishing, ordinary father, but a father who always left me free, always showed me the utmost respect. I had often thought that if I had, from time to time, been able to draw from my imagination, be it in freedom or childishness, it was because, unlike so many of my friends from childhood and youth, I had no fear of my father, and I had sometimes believed very deeply that I had been able to become a writer because my father had, in his youth, wished to be one, too. I had to read him with tolerance – seek to understand what he had written in those hotel rooms.

It was with these hopeful thoughts that I walked over to the suitcase, which was still sitting where my father had left it; using all my willpower, I read through a few manuscripts and notebooks. What had my father written about? I recall a few views from the windows of Parisian hotels, a few poems, paradoxes, analyses ... As I write I feel like someone who has just been in a traffic accident and is struggling to remember how it happened, while at the same time dreading the prospect of remembering too much. When I was a child, and my father and mother were on the brink of a quarrel – when they fell into one of those deadly silences – my father would at once turn on the radio, to change the mood, and the music would help us forget it all faster. Let me change the mood with a few sweet words that will, I hope, serve as well as that music. As you know, the question we writers are asked most often, the favourite question, is; why do you write? I write because I have an innate need to write! I write because I can't do normal work like other people. I write because I want to read books like the ones I write. I write because I am angry at all of you, angry at everyone. I write because I love sitting in a room all day writing. I write because I can only partake in real life by changing it. I write because I want others, all of us, the whole world, to know what sort of life we lived, and continue to live, in Istanbul, in Turkey. I write because I love the smell of paper, pen, and ink. I write because I believe in literature, in the art of the novel, more than I believe in anything else. I write because it is a habit, a passion. I write because I am afraid of being forgotten. I write because I like the glory and interest that writing brings. I write to be alone. Perhaps I write because I hope to understand why I am so very, very angry at all of you, so very, very angry at everyone. I write because I like to be read. I write because once I have begun a novel, an essay, a page, I want to finish it. I write because everyone expects me to write. I write because I have a childish belief in the immortality of libraries, and in the way my books sit on the shelf. I write because it is exciting to turn all of life's beauties and riches into words. I write not to tell a story, but to compose a story. I write because I wish to escape from the foreboding that there is a place I must go but – just as in a dream – I can't quite get there. I write because I have never managed to be happy. I write to be happy.

A week after he came to my office and left me his suitcase, my father came to pay me another visit; as always, he brought me a bar of chocolate (he had forgotten I was 48 years old). As always, we chatted and laughed about life, politics and family gossip. A moment arrived when my father's eyes went to the corner where he had left his suitcase and saw that I had moved it. We looked each other in the eye. There followed a pressing silence. I did not tell him that I had opened the suitcase and tried to read its contents; instead I looked away. But he understood. Just as I understood that he had understood. Just as he understood that I had understood that he had understood. But all this understanding only went so far as it can go in a few seconds. Because my father was a happy, easygoing man who had faith in himself: he smiled at me the way he always did. And as he left the house, he repeated all the lovely and encouraging things that he always said to me, like a father. As always, I watched him leave, envying his happiness, his carefree and unflappable temperament. But I remember that on that day that there was also a flash of joy inside me that made me ashamed. It was prompted by the thought that maybe I wasn't as comfortable in life as he was, maybe I had not led as happy or footloose a life as he had, but that I had devoted it to writing – you've understood ... I was ashamed to be thinking such things at my father's expense. Of all people, my father, who had never been the source of my pain – who had left me free. All this should remind us that writing and literature are intimately linked to a lack at the centre of our lives, and to our feelings of happiness and guilt. But my story has a symmetry that immediately reminded me of something else that day, and that brought me an even deeper sense of guilt. Twenty-three years before my father left me his suitcase, and four years after I had decided, aged 22, to become a novelist, and, abandoning all else, shut myself up in a room, I finished my first novel, Cevdet Bey and Sons; with trembling hands I had given my father a typescript of the still unpublished novel, so that he could read it and tell me what he thought. This was not simply because I had confidence in his taste and his intellect: his opinion was very important to me because he, unlike my mother, had not opposed my wish to become a writer. At that point, my father was not with us, but far away. I waited impatiently for his return. When he arrived two weeks later, I ran to open the door. My father said nothing, but he at once threw his arms around me in a way that told me he had liked it very much. For a while, we were plunged into the sort of awkward silence that so often accompanies moments of great emotion. Then, when we had calmed down and begun to talk, my father resorted to highly charged and exaggerated language to express his confidence in me or my first novel: he told me that one day I would win the prize that I am here to receive with such great happiness. He said this not because he was trying to convince me of his good opinion, or to set this prize as a goal; he said it like a Turkish father, giving support to his son, encouraging him by saying, 'One day you'll become a pasha!' For years, whenever he saw me, he would encourage me with the same words. My father died in December 2002.Today, as I stand before the Swedish Academy and the distinguished members who have awarded me this great prize – this great honour – and their distinguished guests, I dearly wish he could be amongst us.

Translation from Turkish by Maureen Freely

2006-11-21T13:19:00.000-08:00

Come With Me

I have finally signed up to live in a parallel world of immature and unphilosophical existence of no glory. And here it begins -

Come, let's go catch a butterfly again! It's been years, we have been talking about you, me, this thing called world and the like . I am tired of it. Now, let's just be quiet again. Enough with all the drama - let's just keep it simple again.

I walked the other day under a half-lit moon. And at the end of a dream, stumbled upon two trinkets that I had sold to that gypsie woman a long time ago. A piece of your song and a bit of my dance.I found them burried under sheets of forgotten times, borrowed happinesses and layers of dust. No guitar tune, no piano playing. I just hummed those tunes to the children of this town and skipped my way home.

Some day, will you come with me to meet those orphaned dreams we left behind? Dreams that we won't chase. Dreams that lie in a baby's eyes, in the tiny hands and toothless smile. We will blow some soap bubbles and look at the world through them again. Try talking into an emptied bottle of soda and giggle at our distorted voices. We will sit on the porche and feel the wind on our faces again. Shush with all their stories of pain, love and life; we will just break some of Mom's crystal, get yelled at and run away to buy some softies again.

Will you come to catch a butterfly with me again?

2006-11-12T12:57:00.000-08:00

A Sunday and A Chaufferur

Here is another snapshot from my life. Strangely, I do not know which category to put it in. So far, I have recorded events that have touched me. Today I speak of another one of those but one with a very different effect.

My company provides for a ride back home in case one is working late at night or over the weekend. Since my work mostly meets both the above criteria I have taken countless of such town cars home. Naturally I have met many chauffeurs who I carelessly would toss "good night"s and half-hearted "thank you"s at the end of my journey while talking over the phone. But last sunday when I climbed into the back seat of one of those black Lincolns after a short five hours of weekend work, I was relatively happy and cheerful. It was pouring and my denims were wet upto the knees. The man on the front seat turned to me and I apologized promptly for my wet clothes spoiling the car seats. He smiled and said, "no umbrella in New york?" I offered a guilty smile in return and we were on our way. He was a regular sort of a man in his late thirties. There was absolutely nothing striking about him. All I noticed was that he was wearing round "Harry Potter" kind of spectacles and he had rather heavily accented English. I couldn't quite place the accent though. Five minutes into our journey, he asked, " what do you do?" This time instead of offering some vague thing like I work for xyz firm, I said, " I work on a trading desk in this bank". He looked at me in the front mirror and said,"You are an Indian, are you not?" I smiled into the same mirror saying "absolutely". He offered, "I am from Jordan." Now that was something I couldn't have guessed in a year. I asked if he has been driving in New york for long. The lights turned green, he took a turn into the tunnel and casually said, "No, I have been US for five years but I just started driving few months ago. My wife got pregnant. I don't want her to work. So this is my extra money." I shrugged and said "Congratulations, you must be excited about the baby. So what do you do otherwise?" The answer was somewhat unsettling. He responded in his same plain, unmodulated voice, "I am a PhD student in Finance". I mean, come on!! FINANCE???? Of all the things!! Suddenly, I was feeling like a complete idiot. I attempted lamely to cover the damage and said, " Ah, that's fantastic." ....Nah, couldn't help myself and blurted - "but why?" He smiled weakly and said " I am from Jordan, I speak arabic and my first name on my resume is Usman. We don't get paid too well in our country. I wanted my wife to live better than that, so I came here to do my masters. I finished 8th in my class. Then 9/11 happened and I kept applying to every firm in New york that was even remotely related to Finance. At first for front line positions, then for operations, technology anything. But every one said they didn't have a position for me when my friends kept getting accepted by the same people. One after another, every one of them till I couldn't bear getting a beer with them and looking at their faces and feeling what a loser I am. So I decided to go back to school, get a PhD - besides, my professors were the only people who knew me, had seen me work and didn't think I could blow up the faculty building. My wife started working too and it's not that bad, you know. " He put the breaks and stopped under my building, turned around and said, "Enjoy the rest your weekend, you are way too young to spoil weekends at work". As I started towards the elevator, I still did not how to react. And all my life they taught me, what's in a name. I trully wished , wished for him, it is not that bad!

2006-11-05T17:05:00.000-08:00

Antispetic Beauty

These are words from a Felt's song called " Crumbling the antispetic beauty". The song has no particular relevance here, but those were the only words that kept coming to me every time I attempted writing about this beautiful city called Montreal. Have you ever felt that there are categories of beauty? I suppose what I am referring to is what one feels within while in view of certain spectacle. At times some things can be so beautiful that it's intimidating. I have felt exaulted, inspired, humbled, breathless and even morose at different occasions with various forms of beauties that I have chanced upon. But this one was, you know, more like ... calm; so assured and content in its prettiness that had an effect that was almost "healing". Unlike my trendy, gorgeous, runway girl like New york which would give you a high-five and a wink, this city kissed me welcome - soft and elegant like a composed and happy lady in her settled household. It's queer how most of us are so busy with everything around us that we learn to forget what hurt - certainly helpful for self defense in the mad rush, i suppose. But I feel , that is why most of us don't heal. We are like fractured postcards held together by carelessly put cello tape and good for us, that flies! And then, there are few things, people, places that are so innocently beautiful that unknowingly, one breaths, slows the pace, makes peace and heals. In this city, I was cold [ :-) ], got lost (f***ing GPS!), gained my legitimacy (Visa), lost two days of work and made new memories with a song I found again that was lost in the past. An antiseptic beauty???

PS - The picture is from La basilique Notre-Dame cathedral of Montreal

2006-10-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

Vanity Fair

I am oft branded as "proud". Before I proceed, let's start with the Disclaimer - "This post is not to prove / disprove the aforementioned statement or opinion. It merely served as the trigger event that evoked the thought process. This is also not directed against anything or anyone specifically. This post contains reflections of a ruminating head on the very concept of pride and vanity, therefore is subjective yet purely academic. Writer would like to keep any ensuing discussion to be of the similar nature. "

So, speaking of "pride", the word came about from the latin root "prude" which originally bordered on a positive side of things. Now much to my disappointment, what actually the very first sentence refers to is "vanity". Vanity is excessive pride. In some ways, it occurs to me as just another form of narcissism. While pride stems from "self-esteem", vanity feeds on absurd self-centric emotion. In fact, vanity is what pride is not! A lack of pride leads to insecurity with one's own self. And only such a person, in my opinion, would look to hide from her original self and dwell in an imaginary world of self-achievements and idolatry. As Jane Austen states " pride relates more to our opinion of ourselves; vanity, to what we would have others think of us" (Pride and Prejudice). So the crux of all this is that here we walk a thin line. While pride for one's nation, culture etc. is considered to be a noble trait, pride for one's own achievments is normally called "arrogance". So the interesting thing to note here is the percieved and established superiority of the whole over an individual. That certainly stems from the organization of societies across the globe. What is good for one person is not "good enough" if that doesn't turn out to be of some service to the larger community. Indeed, a logical arrrangement (and categorization under"good") by our predecessors in order to preserve the overall well-being of the community. It's amazing how many times I have heard from several people that a single person's existence is meaningless in the large scheme of universe. Certainly modest! So the collective lot of nebula, supernovas, blackholes, galaxies and (6bn - 1) other human beings; 99% of which one has no clue about, holds higher importance in a "virtuous" person's life than himself. So the whole nation can loose it's head raving about some hero, but if his mother utters more than precisely two lines (both of which ofcourse must mention words such as God, good luck, love and support fo everyone else) of her pleasure, she forgets she is being haughty. And god forbid if the person speaks about himself! Some people are so vain that they manage to be successful and then take credit for it themselves! Come on, shouldn't the earth be first thanked for not having missed a spin and the neighborer's baby for not crying at mid-night! Some completely insolent people further think their lives should be lived according to them. I mean, what about the larger purpose and modesty of accomodating everyone, mark my word everyone into our lives!! What's more, they even speak their mind. Here is the rule of thumb - if you are seen happy with yourself way too often, you ARE arrogant. If you are secure, whatever! But if others can sense that security in you, that's a bad bad thing like you have your nose in the air. And such is the wrath of vanity that some can actually own the fact that they are called proud in a public forum quite shamelessly! * Leave that for others to do!*