Learning how to moo while travelling cattle class

I am cheap; a shameless spend thrift who gets chills down her spine when faced with the prospect of landing a deal, preferably involving little or no effort (or resources) on my part. I can be more resourceful with a 'dollar a day' than the daily wage labourer, probably why I find myself in their company most of the time. I have traveled by public transport ever since I could be trusted to tie my own shoelaces without assistance and have always wondered how I developed the stomach for it.

My existence is characterised by a curious dichotomy. Half my time is spent attending wine and cheese events in an effort to convince millionaires to spend their spare change on supporting projects in the arts and the other half of my time is spent jostling for space on buses with middle-aged, belligerent women, just rearing for a fight, and boy do I give them occasion to fight.

All my finer emotions fly out the bus window the minute I find myself forcefully nestled against the armpit of a fellow traveler. My resolve to be the bigger person, to be deferential to the elderly, to resist the urge to step on everyone's toes, to resist the urge to cluck disapprovingly every time someone nudges me or messes up my hair, everything begins to crumble. Like a cornered mongrel I see red every time someone muscles into a seat I have set my sights on, or when someone leans so far into my space that my head rests against their bosom like an errant (and rather saucy) groundnut freed from the terrors of death by mastication only to be trapped in a valley of darkness from which there is no escape. I use the peanut metaphor because EVERYONE who travels by bus seems to love 'em.

So why do I persist in using a mode of transport that clearly gives me high blood pressure? Well that's because deep down, under all the snobbery and vanity, I know that I am a foul-mouthed cow, who's one nudge away from a brawl.

So I guess in coming to terms with my love affair with public transport I have realised that my dilemma did not concern learning how to moo. My dilemma was to find my voice as the proud Indian, desi cow that I am.     

Old soul

It's his time to go
But does it have to be so hard?
His struggle to live is frightening to watch.
Hasn't he struggled enough?
Can't you just let him go?


Small, wrinkled, white heap of fur,
lying by the side of the road,
I will remember your noble life
when you strutted the streets.
You were a king, weren't you?
Your thin snout looks aristocratic.
Were you a bit of a snob?
You look up when you see me coming
your eyes focus with recognition
There's still some fight in there
In those sparkling, wise eyes



People walk by,
They have seen an old dog die before.
What's new about death?
What's special about the death of a dog?
But I see you.

You are not alone.

 

A cat sized hole in my soul

Small feet make big impressions
they taught me life's hardest lessons
to risk loving when nothing's certain
not even permanence or a return of affection

seeking him out in the night's shadows
searching corners for his noisy presence
crying over things he left behind
his favourite toy, a footprint on the wall

My cat my hero my soul companion
you are and will be missed forever...

I will never be able to explain or put in words

just how and how much I loved you

i wonder why i make this mistake again
of loving fleeting images of security
when in truth none exists
except the knowledge that I am here and I love

Pig!

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm feeling a bit fluey at the moment and I'm hoping that I haven't caught the exotic variety of flu doing the rounds at the moment. My earlier post which was supposed to be an ode to pigs turned out to be a rant about the insensitivity of Indian society (how do I do that?), so I decided to write about pigs in a separate post.
The city I'm living in at the moment has quite a few of them. Sludge grey porkers with their snouts constantly buried in a garbage heap. They're quite intelligent actually! If only they took their snouts out of their food troughs we could get a glimpse of this famous intelligence of theirs.
I watched a TV show a long time ago that sought to demonstrate how intelligent pigs were by getting them to move cursors across computer screens in exchange for treats. After performing several tests on them, researchers deduced that pigs were the most intelligent domesticated animal in the world. Don't believe me? Read this: http://mammals.suite101.com/article.cfm/the_intelligent_pig. This flu must be their way of "trying to take over the world" Narf!
They may be intelligent but I doubt they're intelligent enough to discern good food from bad. Thats pretty basic stuff which even my cat knows. Randomly shovelling junk into your mouth is not the behaviour of an intelligent, discerning animal (said the 'higher mammal' while stuffing herself with haldiram's aloo bujia). But seriously, no wonder they have tapeworms and god knows what else. They're not too bright otherwise either. I recently saw a pig with a bottle cap stuck to its foot. It walked miles without making the slightest effort to remove the cap whereas it doesnt take my dog more than a second to remove the sweater I put on her in winter.
Whats my point?... Good question. I don't have a point. Just thought that I might as well cash into swine hysteria. The internets abuzz with talk of the dreaded and deadly swine flu. No harm in my itty bitty blog getting a bit of publicity. Muhahahahaha! I honestly believe pigs are alright. Their shenanigans add a bit of interest to an otherwise boring sidewalk (especially how they do the most disgusting things without any morally upright person being able to stop them. Ha!). In a sense pigs are a really cool metaphor for human hypocrisy (I'm not stealing from Charles Manson). We do the same things they do ( haldiram's being a case in point), we just hide it better.

Losing touch with my humanity

*Sniff. I've got the flu. Considering that I stay in Pune, I'm hoping that it isn't the porcine variety. I'm talking about the swine flu. Its all the rage in the media these days. I can just imagine what newsrooms across the country must be like. "Dying child's parents on line one. I think we've got sunday's front page story!". " A stampede you say! Only 4 dead? Call us after an hour." Alright, thats probably not what its like but I couldn't resist throwing in a little black humour to make my point which is, why do we need a celebrity virus to get our country to talk about the abysmal state of public health care? The only answer I can come up with is that we have become so immune to seeing people suffer that their plight has just faded into the background and assumed less importance over our own. And when I say we, I'm talking about myself as well.
I was walking down a crowded street yesterday when I was accosted by a small girl in her early teens with a little steel lunch box minus its lid. It was crowded, I was feeling sick and I really just wanted to catch a bus and get back home. So I decided to ignore her. She wasn't the type to admit defeat and walk away. As I started to walk away, I could hear her quick shuffling steps that weren't quick enough to overtake me but were quick enough to maintain an annoyingly close distance to me as I tried to walk away. I stopped and tried to cross the road and to my surprise, the little wild cat took a shot at me, lunch box and all. Glaring at her after I crossed the road I realized that she had a big rock with her as well (no wonder my arm hurt so much). When she saw me looking at her, she lifted her hand and pointed at me all the while hurling abuses at me from across the road. I was so surprised. I hardly expected her to attack me. Should I have felt angry with her for expecting neigh demanding money from me? Like it was her birthright... I don't know, but I found myself feeling absolutely wretched instead. Would it have taken me all that much time to just give her a coin or two? Probably not. Why didn't I? That one rupee coin may have made a big difference to her day. I realized that I didn't giver her money because to me she was just a concept. Just another nameless, faceless poor girl. I would surely find another poor girl over the week who would allow me to assauge my guilt over this little incident. Like theres just one little girl in this whole country. That was a pretty pathetic reason.
Everyone talks about poverty so we're tired of hearing about it?... Movies about poverty are so 'inconvenient'... Look away, there's other 'good stuff' happening in this country... Look away, our actors are walking the red carpet at the oscars... Look away, I can't believe Dhoni asked us to cheer for Pakistan. How could he?... But DON'T look away. Our poor are vulnerable to being indoctrinated with Naxal ideologies, they are vulnerable to being indoctrinated with islamist extremism, they are working with countries like China to bring about the downfall of their own country... and they don't even know it. All they want is a little attention. Some development. A voice.
Forget the poor, today finding a way to relate to another person has to be a conscious effort. If we don't make that effort, we just settle into the rat race and risk losing our humanity. We have so many avenues that encourage hyper-individuality but none that balance it out. If we continue ignoring the problems the people of our country face, we're going to be caught with our pants down. Do you really believe the rebellion in the forests of AP are not going to reach the streets of Mumbai soon? Think again. The poor don't stay powerless forever. Every order changes.

Holy Dog

Who are we kidding?

There's such a dearth of visionaries in Indian politics. Under-represented communities have to settle for the next best thing... megalomaniacs with a severe chip on their shoulder who ruthlessly claw their way to the top. Once they reach the top they don't seem to know what to do. Having political representation is undoubtedly a quintessential aspect of social mobility but what are we settling for? At the expense of what?

Its not as if this peculiar malady has escaped the other stratas of India's chaotic billions. Getting access to power by hook or by crook comes first. When the time comes to execute power, most of India's politicians fail the peter parker test. What they are great at, is acting offended. What professionals! Their most common refuge is to act incensed at the 'violation' of their culture of which they know scant little. Culture and religion (read Hinduism) are such efficient masks for inefficiency, the lack of talent and colossal apathy. It's a shame that so many supposed future leaders of India are firm worshipers at the altar of identity politics. They don't spare us their rhetoric even during times of crisis.

Hinduism as a religion has ceased to exist. All thats left in its place are caste and shallow morality. When I hear about the kind of caste related atrocities that occur in India I can't help feeling that Hinduism wasn't all that ahead of its time like so many people claim it was, if its fathers found it necessary to differentiate people on the basis of their work, what they ate and their colour. Apartheid takes place in India. It's somehow managed to remain one of India's best kept secrets. The world community is still quite oblivious to the inhuman treatment of dalits in India. If you're a part of the upper caste and you don't think you're biased think twice. Racism is ingrained in everyone in India.

I still believe in Indian democracy. There are some really good people waiting for a chance to make some real change. For them to make a difference in our fickle society requires us to be patient so as to let their decisions bear fruit.

If you've read this post and you're Indian then you've already typecast me as belonging to a particular community. My only answer to you is to say that I don't belong anywhere and I don't want to belong anywhere. Identity is a myth. We're all same.