Displaced

Born and brought up in Bombay, I've rarely travelled out of this island city. By the time I turned twenty, I'd been to Goa twice; once when I was four years old and the second time when I was ten. I'd been to a few places within Maharashtra as part of school or college trips but those were one day outings spent in the confines of the resort we went to.

Any other town, city or country was pictured in my mind according to the descriptions in books, how it was visualised in films or how it played out in stories told to me by people who were lucky enough to have visited these places.

Thus I had built in my mind certain images of places. Everyone does it, right? For me, Delhi was the political hub. So people would be in safari suits, travel in Ambassadors. I remember Nestle was situated near Connaught Circus. I used to think it was an actual circus with trapeze artists and animals but topped with the essence of coffee and the gooeyness of noodles.

Pune was Poona; I knew the British called it that and they used to go there for their holidays. So I always thought Poona was full of Brit-era bungalows. I somehow also knew it was colder there.

That's the thing if you don't travel much; you have a certain picture of places in your head. We thrive on our imagination and if we come to know a certain place's actuality is different from what we thought it would be, we're disappointed, even living in denial to some extent. People like me, after all, who do not get the chance to travel much have to live it through other means.

Since I've turned twenty, I've travelled quite a bit. I've been to Goa, eleven years after the previous visit (and I'm a Goan. Beat that!) I've been to Lonavala and Nasik. I've been to Pune too. I couldn't situate any of the British bungalows, but I was right about the cold. Also found Pune to be similar to Bombay. MG Road was like South Bombay. Fergusson College seemed as if it was built alongside Xavier's, Wilson and Elphinstone. Pune even had Irani restaurants!

I've yet not been to Delhi though. But when I do, I hope I find the circus with the trapeze artists and animals with the aroma of Nescafe and the slippery Maggi sauntering around it.

Or the child in me will be disappointed that he did not imagine well enough.

Answers Are Never Easy To Come By

“Why do people hate you?” he asked her.

“Why do people love you?” she asked him.

There was no answer either way. They decided to let this question rest till time offered them an answer that would leave them satiated. Time was a better master than most people were. A healer unlike any other.

They spent their time writing, searching for answers in what they wrote.

Answers were never easy to come by, but that never stopped them from asking.

Bad Poetry

And when we talk to each other after so long,
I feel inspired to write a few words about you,
about the time we shared with each other.
And all I can write is bad poetry.

I have no sense of rhyme or rhythm,
pass my judgment through a prism
of trust, of love, and yet they produce no words.

All I write is bad poetry.
All I hum is bad poetry.

I strum all day this guitar,
two chords played all along
and I’m not able to come up with anything better.

Then you read my poems,
and you like them all.
You consider it good poetry
and I know you do like it
but I can write better.

So I’ll sit down with the guitar once again,
till I write something worthy of you.
Till I write better poetry.

Christmas Carols - Death Metal covers (No, really!)

So since I have nothing else to do, presenting to you the gory, violent, death metal cover versions of (in)famous Christmas Carols. (For those who haven't heard the originals, the links are provided.) Enjoy. NOT!

Rudolph The Killer Reindeer (based on Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer)

Intro:

You know Loch Ness, and Yeti, and Jack and Zodiac,

You know all these killers, scary and their like.

But do you recall the most dangerous of all?

Chorus:

Rudolph the killer reindeer,

had a very bloody knife.

And if you ever saw it,

you would say he killed his wife.

All of the other reindeer

used to call him ‘You-Know-Who’.

They never let cruel Rudolph

crack his head up into two.

Verse 1:

Then one gloomy Halloween,

Santa came to say,

“Rudolph, with your knife so bright,

won’t you slit my throat tonight?”

Then all the reindeer feared him,

as he cut him open wide.

All of these other reindeer

then spent a sleepless night.

Verse 2:

Then one silent week later,

Dasher  went up to him.

“Rudolph, with my sword so light,

won’t you suffer a dreary fright?”

Then all the reindeer rejoiced,

as they shouted out in glee,

as Rudolph the red-mouthed reindeer,

was buried deep beneath the tree.

I Saw Mummy Killing Santa Claus (based on I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus)

I saw mummy killing Santa Claus,

underneath the chili-limbu last night.

She didn’t see me creep,

her murder was very neat.

I was so shocked up in my head,

it took me some time to sleep.

Then, I heard mummy coming up the stairs,

and by that time, I hid under my bed.

She screamed; she went away.

Oh what a corpse I would have been,

had mummy found me in my bed last night.

A Merry Gory Christmas to you. (No, I'm not so evil in real-life.)

Folly Of The Fool

Rusted, it lay in a corner,
wounding those who dared run their hands over it,
a runaway symbol from another era,
of their tale, now deprived of air to breathe,
all thanks to the Fool for flooding his house with water.

The sun's rays form a crack in the door.
Oxidised, it survives.
The Fool will not drown again.

Shakespeare, Or Not Shakespeare, That Is The Question

With the film Anonymous coming out in the near future, which questions us whether Shakespeare wrote his plays (or was it the Earl of Oxford, or even Christopher Marlowe?), I came across this New York Times (Books) article on Twitter through @MatthiasRascher.

The article talks about Italian Romantic composer Verdi who successfully composed three operas: Macbeth, Otello and Falstaff out of Shakespeare's plays. It goes on to talk about drama in Shakespeare's time; how plays were written, how they were commissioned, so on and so forth, dispelling the theories that Shakespeare didn't write his plays, along the way.

The article written by Pulitzer-Prize winning author, historian and journalist Garry Wills can be found at this link: http://bit.ly/sBp9EM

Presented below are two paragraphs from the Shakespeare part:

Those who doubt that Shakespeare wrote Shakespeare are working, usually, from a false and modern premise. They are thinking of the modern playwright, a full-time literary fellow who writes a drama and then tries to find people who will put it on—an agent to shop it around, a producer to put up the money, a theater as its venue, a director, actors, designers of sets and costumes, musicians and dancers if the play calls for them, and so on. Sometimes a successful playwright sets up an arrangement with a particular company (Eugene O’Neill and the Province- town Players) or director (Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan), but the process still begins with the writer creating his script, before elements are fitted around it, depending on things like which directors or actors are available for and desirous of doing the play. Producers complain that it is almost impossible to assemble the ideal cast for all the roles as the author envisioned them in his isolated act of creation. The modern writer owns the play by copyright and can publish it on his or her own, whether produced or not. None of these things was true of dramatic production in Shakespeare’s time.

Then, the process began with the actors. They chose the playwright, not vice versa. They owned the play, and could publish it or withhold it from publication. Each troupe had limited resources—often, nine to twelve adult actors (all male), and far fewer boy actors (sometimes as few as two). A Swiss traveler in 1599 saw “about fifteen” players handle the forty-five speaking parts in Julius Caesar.⁹An aspiring playwright had to bring his idea to these actors (or their representatives) with a plot accommodated to the number and talents of the particular troupe. The parts he was describing had to be so arranged as to allow for multiple doublings. A man playing two roles could not meet himself on stage, or even come back in as someone else too soon to allow for costume and other changes (a beard, wig, spectacles, padding, and so on). “For some thirty-five years from 1547–8 plays advertise, usually on the title-page, the number of actors required and how the parts may be doubled, trebled, and even septupled.”¹⁰ In a 1576 morality play, The Tide Tarrieth No Man, the Vice character is told to prolong his duel “while Wantonness maketh her ready” in the tiring-house to come back out as Greediness.¹¹ The plot had to be tailored for the company from the very outset.

Happy reading! 

The Drums And The Piano

I tried something new for the first time wherein I used famous song titles within a poem. The song titles belong to the following bands:

The Doors
Pink Floyd
Oasis
Radiohead
The Who
The Beatles
Led Zeppelin

The Drums And The Piano

They say Time and Money are all that people need to have,       
But My Generation would disagree.

They would never want to be Fake Plastic Trees,
As they travel  on the Crystal Ship to Kashmir,
they Twist And Shout
as they survive on Cigarettes And Alcohol.

But then the Wild Child said Whatever,
She brought out the Paperback Writer within her,
and decided to leave the Pinball Wizard, High And Dry.

Was it Communication Breakdown
or was she being Comfortably Numb?
No one knew. He just Let It Be.

He met her once again, at Moonlight Drive,
they were Riders On The Storm.
He said, “Hello, I Love You.”
She said, “People Are Strange.”
He said, “I’m A Boy.”
She said, “Break On Through (To The Other Side).”
He said, “Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?”
She said, “These Are My Twisted Words. I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”

He said, “Let There Be Love, D’yer Mak’er.
Songbird, Let There Be More Light.”

“Lyla,” she said.
“Baba O’Riley,” he said.

They set out to play Rock And Roll Music; the drums and piano;
Anyone Can Play Guitar.
Wishful Sinful he felt, Behind Blue Eyes, so lost.
He was now Coming Back To Life.
She was now a Jigsaw Falling Into Place.

On the Stairway To Heaven, they thought it was The End,
That is When The Tigers Broke Free;
Free As A Bird.
The Karma Police realised that Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,
They were going to Live Forever.