a park bench
sits
in the widest stretch of green, skirting concrete freshly paved,
with the grain of old wood showing through at its feet, peels of paint down its slivered cheeks, hanging in unsightly wrinkles by its eyes,
where the cooky blind cat in Number 3 scratched it,
Shankar's puppy Khudrat cut his milk teeth,
Jenny the-first-time-jogger right-angled her undusty shoes and tied her shoelace self-consciously,
around the notch where the old man Salunkhe leaned his stick,
and the slight depression of old wood into which hawker Hakim offloaded his cane basket of fruit,
and the invisible oblong where Jehangir put his book down when playing hooky from the tutor's place - where his mother whacked him when she found out-
where the cuckold Shankar the plumber lunged out at his wife and missed,
and the homeless drunk guy put down his bottle on it just there - where did it go…
where Sachin the defeated champion of the under-14 league lashed out with his bat never to pick it up again - sore loser he always was,
and two-timer Amit scuffed it once in the morning, and once in the evening,
where sometimes in the afternoons when no people came by, a few birds would sit and peck for crumbs or termites, pretty as a picture postcard...
where grandmother Misquitta and her neighbour Joanna sat to talk of how their children had changed…
and that secretary nobody-thought-to-ask-her-name sat primly in the evenings reading her book,
and Stella sat thinking of killing herself, really...
where Mr Pinto dug nails in when his business partner had skipped town,
where old man Joe still sits to place his chess pieces with knobbly fingers the kids make fun of, on his roll-up board no matter how many times they roll off the sloping bit and will never learn,
where little Dona and little Saurabh first kissed and first necked and tell the stories still of how they met over dinner in their falling-to-ruins tenement across town, from which they still come to sit upon it and just remember when things get tough…
and where Shanti met Veer for the last time when she wanted him to carve their names in the wood but he went off to marry Preety instead,
where Chottu was brought for his first ever walk and saw his first pigeon on the backrest of a faded bench and his mother to this day swears he gurgled at as though he understood what she was saying….
But it’s just a bench, and it’s been here too long and the town around it's changed and deserves better.
Besides, it’s ugly now.
It will be varnished and polished and made over in the morning, the corporator promised, thanks to funding from the Shankarsethji, whose mother - God bless her soul - loved the park.
A shiny little plaque in her name will be placed there where it is most inconvenient for Miss Patty to rest her back.
But it will be, he vows, as good as new.
Beautiful.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Friday, January 23, 2009
A first kiss
Somewhere in Africa, there's a long green asbestos fence
With a hole in the webbed wiring right at the very end,
There where it bent upwards, leaving just enough space to crawl through
On our bellies.
Where across intertwined fingers,
and at rope ladder meetings upon the nearby tree,
you above and me never ever more than three rungs below
we'd whisper secrets our parents would never know.
Sieved worlds of white and brown flowed in-between.
I think the dog it was who captured us,
Your lips puckered up, but still an inch away from mine,
Your eyes closed, like in the movies and like you said your dad did it,
Mine wide open and frozen in the fear that I would scream.
We ran into the bathroom of your house that twinned mine,
So we exactly knew where everything was, should be, but wasn't,
Hence we kept stumbling into things that were where we thought they wouldn't be.
In the bathroom on the first floor,
Amidst dirty laundry in a wicker basket, yesterday's newspapers and the smell of shampoo from London,
Mother at the supermarket, dads at work,
Nosy kid brother hovering outside the latched door
And mine calling for me, I could hear, in the garden, across the fence
No time for niceties, just a pounding fear
of doing it, or not, and succeeding, or not, and liking it, or not.
There, in two pairs of socks, with an elastic snapped, that had been face to face before,
And the taste of bubble gum lingering,
There, brown and white, went wholly pink.
With a hole in the webbed wiring right at the very end,
There where it bent upwards, leaving just enough space to crawl through
On our bellies.
Where across intertwined fingers,
and at rope ladder meetings upon the nearby tree,
you above and me never ever more than three rungs below
we'd whisper secrets our parents would never know.
Sieved worlds of white and brown flowed in-between.
I think the dog it was who captured us,
Your lips puckered up, but still an inch away from mine,
Your eyes closed, like in the movies and like you said your dad did it,
Mine wide open and frozen in the fear that I would scream.
We ran into the bathroom of your house that twinned mine,
So we exactly knew where everything was, should be, but wasn't,
Hence we kept stumbling into things that were where we thought they wouldn't be.
In the bathroom on the first floor,
Amidst dirty laundry in a wicker basket, yesterday's newspapers and the smell of shampoo from London,
Mother at the supermarket, dads at work,
Nosy kid brother hovering outside the latched door
And mine calling for me, I could hear, in the garden, across the fence
No time for niceties, just a pounding fear
of doing it, or not, and succeeding, or not, and liking it, or not.
There, in two pairs of socks, with an elastic snapped, that had been face to face before,
And the taste of bubble gum lingering,
There, brown and white, went wholly pink.
Will the real Obama stand up please?/ 16 Nov, 2008
Gayatri, TNN
WHEN my mother was a child, the only girl’s school around was the local Marathi medium school down the road. So that’s where my grandfather, a true
blue Tamil Brahmin who wore a veshti beneath his CA pin-striped shirt and a Brahmin pigtail on his head till his dying day, sent her.
Till date, she does household accounts in Marathi, and takes Marathi tuitions, and has a domicile certificate to prove her Marathiness. But she draws a rice flour kolam every morning, eats rice, not rotis, and sings Carnatic classical, not Hindustani, music. My son is part Kannada, part Tamil and speaks neither, his rakhi sister (a festive tradition completely borrowed from the North) is part Punjabi, part Oriya, part Maharashtrian. They communicate in English and Hindi. My son once asked me after a discussion at school, “Mom, what state am I from?” It’s no longer a cliché to pat the kid on the head and say “We’re Indian”.
Obama is part Hawaiian, part African-American, part Caucasian, part Indonesian. And yet it has not stopped him from being the most definitive American this year. So how much does the region you belong to, really matter? And in this march towards being integrated Indians, how much of our regions do we carry with us? “People cling to tokens,” says Antara Dev Sen, daughter of Amartya Sen, and editor of the alternative The Little Magazine. “You see this in changing place names like Mumbai or Bengaluru. It’s political gesturing. It means nothing to people like us from Calcutta, if you call it Kolkata, because both identities exist maturely,” she says.
If RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days brings alive a fictional South Indian town to viewers across the country, irrespective of age and demographic, so does Arun Kolhatkar’s very Marathi Jejuri. And before Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag sank, it drew in viewers as much for Mohanlal, as it did for Bachchan.
How relevant is regionalism then today? When was the last time you flew a kite, thought dandiya was for Gujaratis only, or saw a street play in your mother tongue? It’s now about taking the best of all your worlds. Even everyday food has become pan-Indian. “I’m half Muslim and half Parsi,” says restaurateur and foodie Riyaaz Amlani. “I enjoy being both. But this growing regionality is the single largest threat to our nation. You are either 100 per cent Indian, or not!”
But rather than deny regionalism, mainstream India is gathering its regions in. The film industry is filled with those who came from near and far to find their fortune. Actor Dev Anand came from Lahore, “does that make me Pakistani? India made me what I am,” he says. Director Sriram Raghavan is a Tamilian from Pune, doling out slice-of-Mumbai-life thrillers like Johnny Gaddar.
“Regional cinema like Vaalu has done great business, budgets are increasing and you can catch a Malayalam movie in a multiplex,” he points out. Actor Nandita Das, who has spanned regional films, explains, “It is possible to be rooted as well as just Indian. With the growing global village, the individual feels small, so he clings to an ‘identity’ given to him.”
In literature, The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, edited by the US-born and educated Punjabi Rakesh Khanna, showcases crime writing — a genre absent in mainstream fiction — from small town writers. “Regional languages have cutting edge stuff,” says Khanna. And in couture, quiet revolutions are taking place. Designer Wendell Rodricks has returned to his roots in Goa.
He says, “Golawallahs and the weavers of Benares are kitschy tokens of India to the West, while true Indian craftsmen are being sourced by designers from Anna Sui to Chanel.” Designer Rohit Bal agrees that “regional craftsmen are the backbone of couture in India. But it does not work by couturiers regressing into villages. It is about bringing the regional up to the national and from there to the global.” The progression is towards a unified identity on all fronts.
And yet, it remains scratchy, as poet Gieve Patel puts it, “There are individual efforts, nothing I know of is giving regionalism momentum.” Tokenism is a clinging to turf by those who can’t make the transition.
Critic-poet-curator Ranjit Hoskote, says “I do not believe that anything like the ‘regional voice’ exists, except in the imagination of regionalists. The tragedy of India is culture turned into a mere pretext for the pursuit of a narrow, violent, and self-destructive politics of identity. Gujarati, Bengali, Urdu, Marathi, Malayalam and Kannada writers have been in the forefront of avant-garde tendencies, forming connections with ideological movements across the world. The idea of the regional voice is a chimera.”
Prahlad Kakkar, “quarter UP, quarter Maharashtrian, quarter Punjabi, quarter Dehra Ismail Khan” disagrees. “Political regionalism is valid because someone has to take responsibility for the turf. Respect the place you grow roots in. When the Iranians first landed on Gujarat shores, the king showed them a glass of milk and said, ‘It’s filled to the brim, where will you fit in?’ The Iranians took a spoonful of sugar, stirred it, and said ‘Like that’,” he says.
Politics views India as regions for votes. You are your constituency. Culture views an integrated Indian. Obama is proof the integrated man wins elections too. Is Raj Thackeray listening?
WHEN my mother was a child, the only girl’s school around was the local Marathi medium school down the road. So that’s where my grandfather, a true
blue Tamil Brahmin who wore a veshti beneath his CA pin-striped shirt and a Brahmin pigtail on his head till his dying day, sent her.
Till date, she does household accounts in Marathi, and takes Marathi tuitions, and has a domicile certificate to prove her Marathiness. But she draws a rice flour kolam every morning, eats rice, not rotis, and sings Carnatic classical, not Hindustani, music. My son is part Kannada, part Tamil and speaks neither, his rakhi sister (a festive tradition completely borrowed from the North) is part Punjabi, part Oriya, part Maharashtrian. They communicate in English and Hindi. My son once asked me after a discussion at school, “Mom, what state am I from?” It’s no longer a cliché to pat the kid on the head and say “We’re Indian”.
Obama is part Hawaiian, part African-American, part Caucasian, part Indonesian. And yet it has not stopped him from being the most definitive American this year. So how much does the region you belong to, really matter? And in this march towards being integrated Indians, how much of our regions do we carry with us? “People cling to tokens,” says Antara Dev Sen, daughter of Amartya Sen, and editor of the alternative The Little Magazine. “You see this in changing place names like Mumbai or Bengaluru. It’s political gesturing. It means nothing to people like us from Calcutta, if you call it Kolkata, because both identities exist maturely,” she says.
If RK Narayan’s Malgudi Days brings alive a fictional South Indian town to viewers across the country, irrespective of age and demographic, so does Arun Kolhatkar’s very Marathi Jejuri. And before Ram Gopal Varma’s Aag sank, it drew in viewers as much for Mohanlal, as it did for Bachchan.
How relevant is regionalism then today? When was the last time you flew a kite, thought dandiya was for Gujaratis only, or saw a street play in your mother tongue? It’s now about taking the best of all your worlds. Even everyday food has become pan-Indian. “I’m half Muslim and half Parsi,” says restaurateur and foodie Riyaaz Amlani. “I enjoy being both. But this growing regionality is the single largest threat to our nation. You are either 100 per cent Indian, or not!”
But rather than deny regionalism, mainstream India is gathering its regions in. The film industry is filled with those who came from near and far to find their fortune. Actor Dev Anand came from Lahore, “does that make me Pakistani? India made me what I am,” he says. Director Sriram Raghavan is a Tamilian from Pune, doling out slice-of-Mumbai-life thrillers like Johnny Gaddar.
“Regional cinema like Vaalu has done great business, budgets are increasing and you can catch a Malayalam movie in a multiplex,” he points out. Actor Nandita Das, who has spanned regional films, explains, “It is possible to be rooted as well as just Indian. With the growing global village, the individual feels small, so he clings to an ‘identity’ given to him.”
In literature, The Blaft Anthology of Tamil Pulp Fiction, edited by the US-born and educated Punjabi Rakesh Khanna, showcases crime writing — a genre absent in mainstream fiction — from small town writers. “Regional languages have cutting edge stuff,” says Khanna. And in couture, quiet revolutions are taking place. Designer Wendell Rodricks has returned to his roots in Goa.
He says, “Golawallahs and the weavers of Benares are kitschy tokens of India to the West, while true Indian craftsmen are being sourced by designers from Anna Sui to Chanel.” Designer Rohit Bal agrees that “regional craftsmen are the backbone of couture in India. But it does not work by couturiers regressing into villages. It is about bringing the regional up to the national and from there to the global.” The progression is towards a unified identity on all fronts.
And yet, it remains scratchy, as poet Gieve Patel puts it, “There are individual efforts, nothing I know of is giving regionalism momentum.” Tokenism is a clinging to turf by those who can’t make the transition.
Critic-poet-curator Ranjit Hoskote, says “I do not believe that anything like the ‘regional voice’ exists, except in the imagination of regionalists. The tragedy of India is culture turned into a mere pretext for the pursuit of a narrow, violent, and self-destructive politics of identity. Gujarati, Bengali, Urdu, Marathi, Malayalam and Kannada writers have been in the forefront of avant-garde tendencies, forming connections with ideological movements across the world. The idea of the regional voice is a chimera.”
Prahlad Kakkar, “quarter UP, quarter Maharashtrian, quarter Punjabi, quarter Dehra Ismail Khan” disagrees. “Political regionalism is valid because someone has to take responsibility for the turf. Respect the place you grow roots in. When the Iranians first landed on Gujarat shores, the king showed them a glass of milk and said, ‘It’s filled to the brim, where will you fit in?’ The Iranians took a spoonful of sugar, stirred it, and said ‘Like that’,” he says.
Politics views India as regions for votes. You are your constituency. Culture views an integrated Indian. Obama is proof the integrated man wins elections too. Is Raj Thackeray listening?
A joker’s tragedy!/ 9 Nov, 2008
If the films that best rock the box-office are laugh riots, you’d think star comedians — from Vinay Pathak to Boman Irani, Arshad Warsi to Paresh
Rawal — laugh all the way to the bank. But beneath the grease paint are worry lines.
“Three years ago, my cousin died in a motorcycle accident. I was devastated. I reached Ranchi and the media barricaded the car for bytes. I put on my dark glasses, and sat in the back seat, crying. That day I wished I wasn’t a comedian,” says Pathak.
Pathak’s just filed for divorce from wife Sonika Sahay in June, and Warsi’s fighting to save his sevenyear marriage to Maria Goretti. Both doting fathers, back-slapping friends, and known family men. And yet, both can’t stop smiling. At premieres, page 3 events, in TV bytes. And that’s ‘can’t’, as in ‘can’t afford to’. What’s it like to put on a mask you can’t take off? Pathak’s Dasvidanya, not even a comedy, is being perceived as one because of his presence. Says Pathak, “Being a public personality is a responsibility. People expect me to be funny. Even when I don’t make an effort, anything I say is construed as funny!”
Comedians have always dealt with immense social pressure to be funny all the time. Johnny Lever once said, “They will probably expect me to crack a joke at my funeral as well!” TV funny man Gaurav Gera is upset. “You don’t expect Emraan Hashmi to walk down the street kissing, do you? You saw Ehsaan Qureshi in Bigg Boss — one can’t be funny all the time!”
The result is comedians, like Gera, consciously move away from the tag. “I gravitated towards comedy because I’m naturally funny, but the pressure gets too much,” he admits. “A few years ago, I had just broken up and I couldn’t keep making myself smile anymore. I’ve worked to bring about the change from funnyman to actor.”
After Munnabhai, Warsi fought a lone battle to be recognised as an actor. “Being funny is taken too lightly,” he explained. “I want to go beyond the funny sidekick.” Friends say his need to constantly strike a balance was emotionally draining.
Clinical psychologist Shrradha Sidhwani explains, “Comedians smile even when collapsing inside. They don’t express negative emotions, and these fester. In this bid to keep laughing, you can lose yourself. But laughter can also be the best medicine.”
Take any of India’s greatest comedians — from Kishore Kumar to Govinda — and you’ll find mood swings, tempers and tantrums. The frustration of never being recognised enough? Lever asks, “Why does Jim Carrey command a diverse audience? His talent is showcased so beautifully by producers... Govinda is an awesome actor, but he can’t command the price of the Khans because he’s stereotyped.”
“You have to stop feeding the image,” says Pathak. Boman Irani plays villain, photographer, theatre artiste to add balance. But he also shrugs, “I want to die laughing!”
It would seem that the comedian’s gift is his laughter. And it is his burden too...
Rawal — laugh all the way to the bank. But beneath the grease paint are worry lines.
“Three years ago, my cousin died in a motorcycle accident. I was devastated. I reached Ranchi and the media barricaded the car for bytes. I put on my dark glasses, and sat in the back seat, crying. That day I wished I wasn’t a comedian,” says Pathak.
Pathak’s just filed for divorce from wife Sonika Sahay in June, and Warsi’s fighting to save his sevenyear marriage to Maria Goretti. Both doting fathers, back-slapping friends, and known family men. And yet, both can’t stop smiling. At premieres, page 3 events, in TV bytes. And that’s ‘can’t’, as in ‘can’t afford to’. What’s it like to put on a mask you can’t take off? Pathak’s Dasvidanya, not even a comedy, is being perceived as one because of his presence. Says Pathak, “Being a public personality is a responsibility. People expect me to be funny. Even when I don’t make an effort, anything I say is construed as funny!”
Comedians have always dealt with immense social pressure to be funny all the time. Johnny Lever once said, “They will probably expect me to crack a joke at my funeral as well!” TV funny man Gaurav Gera is upset. “You don’t expect Emraan Hashmi to walk down the street kissing, do you? You saw Ehsaan Qureshi in Bigg Boss — one can’t be funny all the time!”
The result is comedians, like Gera, consciously move away from the tag. “I gravitated towards comedy because I’m naturally funny, but the pressure gets too much,” he admits. “A few years ago, I had just broken up and I couldn’t keep making myself smile anymore. I’ve worked to bring about the change from funnyman to actor.”
After Munnabhai, Warsi fought a lone battle to be recognised as an actor. “Being funny is taken too lightly,” he explained. “I want to go beyond the funny sidekick.” Friends say his need to constantly strike a balance was emotionally draining.
Clinical psychologist Shrradha Sidhwani explains, “Comedians smile even when collapsing inside. They don’t express negative emotions, and these fester. In this bid to keep laughing, you can lose yourself. But laughter can also be the best medicine.”
Take any of India’s greatest comedians — from Kishore Kumar to Govinda — and you’ll find mood swings, tempers and tantrums. The frustration of never being recognised enough? Lever asks, “Why does Jim Carrey command a diverse audience? His talent is showcased so beautifully by producers... Govinda is an awesome actor, but he can’t command the price of the Khans because he’s stereotyped.”
“You have to stop feeding the image,” says Pathak. Boman Irani plays villain, photographer, theatre artiste to add balance. But he also shrugs, “I want to die laughing!”
It would seem that the comedian’s gift is his laughter. And it is his burden too...
Shammi Kapoor: Enjoy the ride/ 30 Oct 2008
It was a summer I would never forget. We were at my sister-in-law (Mrs Krishna Raj Kapoor)’s maika. Her father was the then IGP of police of Rewas state.
Every year, bhabhiji would go to her maika and one of us would accompany her. That year, I went along. I had just passed my matric — I was around 16. It was very hot, so her younger brother Rajendranath, who later went on to become one of my closest friends and who acted with me in many films — and I would go swimming. We would jump into the wild river with one of those broad tyres and swim for a good two hours. That is how I learned to swim.
Every day at 6 am, police horses would be brought to the house for Rajendranath to go riding. When I was there, one was sent for me too. It is very tough to ride a police horse, especially when you are a light boy of 16. But we would go riding across the plains. On one of our rides, there was an Alsatian dog that began to chase us. The horses started to run. While Rajendranath veered to the other side, I went down a steep gully which turned out to be a dead end. I went flying over the head of my horse and smashed onto the top of the barricade at the end. I must have passed out for a few minutes.
Someone shooed away the dog, and I regained my senses. I stood up, took the reins of the horse, and even it, I’m sure, thought I was going to lead it back home. But I clearly remember what I did next. I put my foot in the stirrups, and mounted the horse again. And I rode him back to the house.
The incident has stayed with me all my life — life is full of falls, but the important thing is to get back on the horse and ride it again. If you develop a fear of failure, you will never really learn anything.
The first lesson of fame is always humility. But I never understand it when people try to act shy of, or deny, their achievements. I feel very proud of my achievements. Just the other day, I was watching Junglee on one of my iPods, and I saw the part where I slid down the snow slope in a song, and I felt so proud of myself , because the director had not asked me to do that. Enjoying and accepting fame is as important as being humble.
I am also always curious to accept change. When there’s a new car, I’m the first to go and open up the carburetor. When there’s a new musical instrument, I want to know how it works. My niece, Ritu (Nanda) brought a computer home in 1988. I was determined to get one just like it at a time when it was only available to defence establishments. And it became my hobby. I was completely self-taught. The Times of India once said of me, ‘When the mouse came to Shammi’s hand, the cigarette flew out.’ It’s true. I stopped smoking, drinking. I started learning, thinking. Showbiz today is so competitive. Because it’s all about the money.
Shah Rukh is the best, so he’s the richest. When Mr Bachchan doesn’t have a film here, he will take a troupe and tour other countries. And the endorsements...! But, never forget that whatever you spend money on, no matter how many girls in bikinis you put on screen, the script and good dialogues — that is the core of the movie.
The most important thing in life to me was my wife, Geeta Bali. She died at the wrong time. I was at the peak of my career, starting a new innings with Nasir Hussain. She had no business dying when she did. But with bad comes good. Towards the end of my career, came my wife Neela. I had known her all my life. I would travel to Bhavnagar with my father’s troupe and she and her family would come to watch. Then, years later they shifted to Vile Parle and I watched her grow up. Nasir and I would go to her house and sit with her father and talk shikaar. Life always comes full circle.
(As told to Gayatri)
Every year, bhabhiji would go to her maika and one of us would accompany her. That year, I went along. I had just passed my matric — I was around 16. It was very hot, so her younger brother Rajendranath, who later went on to become one of my closest friends and who acted with me in many films — and I would go swimming. We would jump into the wild river with one of those broad tyres and swim for a good two hours. That is how I learned to swim.
Every day at 6 am, police horses would be brought to the house for Rajendranath to go riding. When I was there, one was sent for me too. It is very tough to ride a police horse, especially when you are a light boy of 16. But we would go riding across the plains. On one of our rides, there was an Alsatian dog that began to chase us. The horses started to run. While Rajendranath veered to the other side, I went down a steep gully which turned out to be a dead end. I went flying over the head of my horse and smashed onto the top of the barricade at the end. I must have passed out for a few minutes.
Someone shooed away the dog, and I regained my senses. I stood up, took the reins of the horse, and even it, I’m sure, thought I was going to lead it back home. But I clearly remember what I did next. I put my foot in the stirrups, and mounted the horse again. And I rode him back to the house.
The incident has stayed with me all my life — life is full of falls, but the important thing is to get back on the horse and ride it again. If you develop a fear of failure, you will never really learn anything.
The first lesson of fame is always humility. But I never understand it when people try to act shy of, or deny, their achievements. I feel very proud of my achievements. Just the other day, I was watching Junglee on one of my iPods, and I saw the part where I slid down the snow slope in a song, and I felt so proud of myself , because the director had not asked me to do that. Enjoying and accepting fame is as important as being humble.
I am also always curious to accept change. When there’s a new car, I’m the first to go and open up the carburetor. When there’s a new musical instrument, I want to know how it works. My niece, Ritu (Nanda) brought a computer home in 1988. I was determined to get one just like it at a time when it was only available to defence establishments. And it became my hobby. I was completely self-taught. The Times of India once said of me, ‘When the mouse came to Shammi’s hand, the cigarette flew out.’ It’s true. I stopped smoking, drinking. I started learning, thinking. Showbiz today is so competitive. Because it’s all about the money.
Shah Rukh is the best, so he’s the richest. When Mr Bachchan doesn’t have a film here, he will take a troupe and tour other countries. And the endorsements...! But, never forget that whatever you spend money on, no matter how many girls in bikinis you put on screen, the script and good dialogues — that is the core of the movie.
The most important thing in life to me was my wife, Geeta Bali. She died at the wrong time. I was at the peak of my career, starting a new innings with Nasir Hussain. She had no business dying when she did. But with bad comes good. Towards the end of my career, came my wife Neela. I had known her all my life. I would travel to Bhavnagar with my father’s troupe and she and her family would come to watch. Then, years later they shifted to Vile Parle and I watched her grow up. Nasir and I would go to her house and sit with her father and talk shikaar. Life always comes full circle.
(As told to Gayatri)
The Other Side / Sep 7, 2008/ Times Life
The other side
7 Sep 2008, 0600 hrs IST, Gayatri, TNN
The man is more often than not forgiven an extra-marital affair, and the wife assumes martyr status. Where does that leave the Other Woman...
To the Other Woman of long standing, to borrow a line from Germaine Greer, watching society’s efforts to deny her existence is amusing. Angelina Jolie trots around the world collecting children in a do-gooding publicity blitz to wipe the memory of her home-breaking affair. Senator John Edwards smiles and is forgiven by a cancer-stricken wife who turns martyr for his campaign. The mistress becomes a ‘mistake’. And Carla Bruni almost makes it as a poster girl, until the too-socially-perfect a marriage to forgo happened.
The Delhi High Court considers the mistress equal to the wife in matters of domestic violence, but society still has its nose in the air. Shobhaa De, Pooja Bedi, Smriti Irani all distance themselves from even commenting. Other Women take the rap in Suchitra Krishnamoorthi’s rants on infidelity, on the cover of a society magazine pointing fingers at a silenced socialite Queenie Dhody, in Rani Mukerji’s professional isolation and self-imposed silence. Men dally and women take the blame. Hasn’t it always been that way?
When Shakespeare died, he left his wife Ann Hathaway only his ‘second best bed’ in his will. And who knows where the original went! But why go so far? The Other Woman remains embedded in Indian culture; in the harems of the Mughals, the erudite Bengali babu’s sonagachi of the 1800s and in the Tamil Brahmin’s chinna veedu. Mistresses were beautiful, talented, seductive magnets of men, and inescapably sidelined until they entered mainstream marriage.
At least those who were lucky did. Indian filmdom has pointed its finger at everyone from Waheeda Rehman to Madhubala, Rekha’s Silsila, Sridevi’s wait for respectability, and Hema Malini’s refusal to even pose for photographs with Dharmendra.
What motivates an affair? “Well the sex is amazing, I’m taken care of, and I have my parallel life. It’s fun without family,” says Sneha Upadhyay, a 34-year-old IT expert. She won’t extricate herself, though her partner’s wife is currently pregnant. “I don’t crave the stability his marriage has. If he gave it to me, I would run. My friends say I am in denial,” she says, “I think they’re denying I can be happy this way.” As Maureen Dowd phrases it, “Men are necessary not because we need them, but because we want them. It’s nice. Like an ice-cream or something.”
The man on his part treats his Other Woman as he would never treat his wife — international holidays, a penthouse, diamonds, flowers, and tenderly calling her the love of his life. The stuff of fantasies.
Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, who most famously accused Priety Zinta of being a part of ex-husband Shekhar Kapoor’s life, questions the role of the man in an affair on her blog. “Is forgiveness a virtue? The new-age man has to apologise or be damned. So he did. He became a martyr to his hormones. Would it not have been more honest for him to say I did it so what?” she says, referring to Edwards.
Prahlad Kakkar though says men in affairs are the wimps. “Very few men in affairs have the spine to give the Other Woman the option of moving on. Most pretend its leading somewhere,” says Kakkar adding, “He’s not going to jeopardise respectability for a potential soulmate. Women fall into the trap when the man lagaos the miserable three lines — I need you.”
But why presume that men are seduced beyond their will? A page 3 hostess admits, “It’s the married men who are angling for an affair. It takes a special kind of woman to sustain an affair and still be on the social circuit. To accept being sidelined, people’s glances... It’s not for the faint of heart my dear,” she says adding, “I would run the other way.” “It’s not like the man is being kidnapped, drugged or stolen away,” says Rosa, once accused of being actor Saif Ali Khan’s Other Woman. “A lot of people see only what is outward. They don’t notice the home they’re accused of wrecking probably had its own reasons for falling apart. They only see the explosion. They see what follows and not what went before.”
Anil Dharker is happy to stand up for the Other Woman. “Would a man be called the Other Man? Never. It comes from thinking of women as more chaste beings. That women have sexual urges is a surprisingly new idea. That a woman initiates sex, wants an orgasm is odd. The Other Woman doesn’t have an easy time of it.”
“As long as there is marriage, there will be a mistress,” writes Victoria Griffin in The Other Woman. And as long as there is a mistress, may she find a voice.
Always a mistress, never a wife
I love him without a tag, freely. We find peace in knowing glances, shared moments, stolen sighs. Worrying if people would find out, what they’d say, was a fleeting instant of fear. We don’t need public acknowledgement. It’s been a year of constant bliss. There’s firmness to being the strength inside a man. I glow with secret love. I think a mistress is on par with the wife. We just own a side of a man she doesn’t. We are equals, with spaces in our togetherness.
We share joys without responsibilities, we console without being involved. There is a distance too because the relationship is fragile. On the other hand, wives and husbands go where I will never. We don’t discuss ‘their’ life much. Nobody knows about tomorrow so we each live more fully for today. Today, here and now, is all it’s about. We’re happy in our own ivory tower. One day, it will come crashing I suppose. Shrug. Tomorrow is another day.
7 Sep 2008, 0600 hrs IST, Gayatri, TNN
The man is more often than not forgiven an extra-marital affair, and the wife assumes martyr status. Where does that leave the Other Woman...
To the Other Woman of long standing, to borrow a line from Germaine Greer, watching society’s efforts to deny her existence is amusing. Angelina Jolie trots around the world collecting children in a do-gooding publicity blitz to wipe the memory of her home-breaking affair. Senator John Edwards smiles and is forgiven by a cancer-stricken wife who turns martyr for his campaign. The mistress becomes a ‘mistake’. And Carla Bruni almost makes it as a poster girl, until the too-socially-perfect a marriage to forgo happened.
The Delhi High Court considers the mistress equal to the wife in matters of domestic violence, but society still has its nose in the air. Shobhaa De, Pooja Bedi, Smriti Irani all distance themselves from even commenting. Other Women take the rap in Suchitra Krishnamoorthi’s rants on infidelity, on the cover of a society magazine pointing fingers at a silenced socialite Queenie Dhody, in Rani Mukerji’s professional isolation and self-imposed silence. Men dally and women take the blame. Hasn’t it always been that way?
When Shakespeare died, he left his wife Ann Hathaway only his ‘second best bed’ in his will. And who knows where the original went! But why go so far? The Other Woman remains embedded in Indian culture; in the harems of the Mughals, the erudite Bengali babu’s sonagachi of the 1800s and in the Tamil Brahmin’s chinna veedu. Mistresses were beautiful, talented, seductive magnets of men, and inescapably sidelined until they entered mainstream marriage.
At least those who were lucky did. Indian filmdom has pointed its finger at everyone from Waheeda Rehman to Madhubala, Rekha’s Silsila, Sridevi’s wait for respectability, and Hema Malini’s refusal to even pose for photographs with Dharmendra.
What motivates an affair? “Well the sex is amazing, I’m taken care of, and I have my parallel life. It’s fun without family,” says Sneha Upadhyay, a 34-year-old IT expert. She won’t extricate herself, though her partner’s wife is currently pregnant. “I don’t crave the stability his marriage has. If he gave it to me, I would run. My friends say I am in denial,” she says, “I think they’re denying I can be happy this way.” As Maureen Dowd phrases it, “Men are necessary not because we need them, but because we want them. It’s nice. Like an ice-cream or something.”
The man on his part treats his Other Woman as he would never treat his wife — international holidays, a penthouse, diamonds, flowers, and tenderly calling her the love of his life. The stuff of fantasies.
Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, who most famously accused Priety Zinta of being a part of ex-husband Shekhar Kapoor’s life, questions the role of the man in an affair on her blog. “Is forgiveness a virtue? The new-age man has to apologise or be damned. So he did. He became a martyr to his hormones. Would it not have been more honest for him to say I did it so what?” she says, referring to Edwards.
Prahlad Kakkar though says men in affairs are the wimps. “Very few men in affairs have the spine to give the Other Woman the option of moving on. Most pretend its leading somewhere,” says Kakkar adding, “He’s not going to jeopardise respectability for a potential soulmate. Women fall into the trap when the man lagaos the miserable three lines — I need you.”
But why presume that men are seduced beyond their will? A page 3 hostess admits, “It’s the married men who are angling for an affair. It takes a special kind of woman to sustain an affair and still be on the social circuit. To accept being sidelined, people’s glances... It’s not for the faint of heart my dear,” she says adding, “I would run the other way.” “It’s not like the man is being kidnapped, drugged or stolen away,” says Rosa, once accused of being actor Saif Ali Khan’s Other Woman. “A lot of people see only what is outward. They don’t notice the home they’re accused of wrecking probably had its own reasons for falling apart. They only see the explosion. They see what follows and not what went before.”
Anil Dharker is happy to stand up for the Other Woman. “Would a man be called the Other Man? Never. It comes from thinking of women as more chaste beings. That women have sexual urges is a surprisingly new idea. That a woman initiates sex, wants an orgasm is odd. The Other Woman doesn’t have an easy time of it.”
“As long as there is marriage, there will be a mistress,” writes Victoria Griffin in The Other Woman. And as long as there is a mistress, may she find a voice.
Always a mistress, never a wife
I love him without a tag, freely. We find peace in knowing glances, shared moments, stolen sighs. Worrying if people would find out, what they’d say, was a fleeting instant of fear. We don’t need public acknowledgement. It’s been a year of constant bliss. There’s firmness to being the strength inside a man. I glow with secret love. I think a mistress is on par with the wife. We just own a side of a man she doesn’t. We are equals, with spaces in our togetherness.
We share joys without responsibilities, we console without being involved. There is a distance too because the relationship is fragile. On the other hand, wives and husbands go where I will never. We don’t discuss ‘their’ life much. Nobody knows about tomorrow so we each live more fully for today. Today, here and now, is all it’s about. We’re happy in our own ivory tower. One day, it will come crashing I suppose. Shrug. Tomorrow is another day.
Thirst
Hide where you will
In states of being, asleep, awake, alert, or something akin
To dead; behind deadbolts of mettle and grit
Employed, enjoyed, enduring moments,
Engaged and sunk in work that grabs
You by the neck and dares you speak,
joust, joke, jibe, jeer if you will
Upon yourself call the curse of a packed
Day; Whether locked in love, in lust, in
Lazy spread of a kitten upon upon a tattered scratcing mat, outside a bathroom door; in sunlight, by stealth of night,
Surreptitiously, slicking, slinking, sliding
By upward thrust and unstoppable
Quest; unquenchable burst, it arrives.
ignore it and it underlies your every move
Lick your lips, or mine, what lingers, salty, is its be ing.
(c) Gayatri Jayaraman, 2009
In states of being, asleep, awake, alert, or something akin
To dead; behind deadbolts of mettle and grit
Employed, enjoyed, enduring moments,
Engaged and sunk in work that grabs
You by the neck and dares you speak,
joust, joke, jibe, jeer if you will
Upon yourself call the curse of a packed
Day; Whether locked in love, in lust, in
Lazy spread of a kitten upon upon a tattered scratcing mat, outside a bathroom door; in sunlight, by stealth of night,
Surreptitiously, slicking, slinking, sliding
By upward thrust and unstoppable
Quest; unquenchable burst, it arrives.
ignore it and it underlies your every move
Lick your lips, or mine, what lingers, salty, is its be ing.
(c) Gayatri Jayaraman, 2009
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