Kafka says

"Theoretically there is a perfect possibility of happiness: believing in the indestructible element in oneself and not striving towards it."

Any thoughts on this?

Find some of Kafka's transalted works here.

Sulekha's Tale

They moved to Chennai, it used to be Madras then. Suelkha, her two younger sisters and her brother who was still a toddler now had the ground level quarter, next to the squat compound wall at the government Municipality campus. They had two big shady mango trees at the backyard but they didn’t have the perfectly shaped ripe, yellow mangoes like the trees in Tiruchy.

Today evening Amma prepared for her Friday visit to the temple. They take a small bag and place a container with oil, a box of match-sticks, alongwith some bananas and a purse full of coins. As Sulekha walks reluctantly besides her mother you can hear her mumble songs. It’s almost a habit to her, very involuntary weekly habit.

Sulekha is the eldest one; she had the almond shaped eyes, and dark ebony skin of her mother. She vividly remembers the elation in the house when her father got the job at the government office. Her father’s four sisters had gathered for a ‘farewell’, they even scripted a long list of things he was to parcel for the coming Diwali. Now he writes them long letters but he is worried he can’t send them any gifts.

She is oldest among the dozen kids stuffed into an auto-rickshaw on the way to school. She sits with her yellow ribbon fluttering; knees awkwardly bent holding a six year old in her lap. She collects their bags and holds all their tiffins, and hands them out as soon to the little ones when they reach school.

Sulekha doesn’t speak much, her teachers complain often. There is noise around her all the time maybe she doesn’t know if she will be heard.

Exceprts

From a book i really enjoyed reading:

“But even after her words were folded and put to one side, they would continue staring at each other in the knowledge that the endurers of a common fate have an association that outlives calamity and joy, strengthens over time, and deepens into a clarity that allows them to accept that love was nothing but the fragile excuse that enjoined them in the first place, and that after its cessation, after the haunting emptiness of its passing, this silence they were now sharing was, in fact, nothing short of divine eloquence.”


"There are mercies in this life so small and humble that they would
break you more easily than the cruelties ever would."

- The Last Song of Dusk by Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi

Healing

They say open wounds heal faster...

Writer's Tale

The roads of my village, filled with rustic mysteries, the bustling complicated lives of the big cities I lived in, the pool of faces that drift aimlessly in this island country, all seek to be written.

I write to conceal a part of these stories, the ones you and I cannot share, like the essence of my experience that escapes you even when you read my tales.

I wander within my characters, empty of any originality, but then-is there any such thing as the quintessential individual? I am all my characters put together, maybe they are parts of me that I put together in seeking to understand me.

Ever wondered about the writer’s tale, about the torments of choosing between stories, the pleasures of living many lives, the discontent of every insufficient word? I sit by the window now trapped by the pale violet of an unknown bloom on the tree outside.

A solemn song in the backdrop is competing with the gaiety of many birds and the sluggish cars and buses revving up their engines to go uphill on the road next door. I am writing here in the moment what I have lived in parts, but never thought, now these stories are finding words, yet they get skewed by the definitive forms of words, fighting for abstraction even as they get immortalized and trapped.

There is a knock on the door, and I tentatively close the window, embarrassed at the incomplete script that solitude and I had together created. The lock on the dorm pantry has been replaced; I am reminded of the pantry regulations and informed of a new security guard who will be making rounds peering into lives, sneaking glimpses, just like me. I smile, and fidget with the doorknob, barely hiding my urge to relegate all voices outside the wooden door and return to my written world. The informer has moved on to the next door, and I am left with a morning craving for a frothy coffee, Indian style.

With the strong essence of coffee filling the limited confines of my room, I sit down to write. The world melts away, and I leave the aroma of coffee behind me as I drift into the mind of Sulekha, the little girl in a small town....

Reading

The blue Bedspread: Sublime prose, melancholic and haunting, its a book that stays with you.
Here's an excerpt of the author's interview that i find fascinatingly revealing..

q: At a book discussion for your last novel If You are Afraid of Heights, everyone else was going on about how more people should read, but you said that was an unrealistic expectation. Why?

Jha: See, the few people who are damaged enough to love reading are essentially those who are comfortable with solitude. Also, reading forces you to have both imagination and empathy – two troubling little things – so you see a bit of yourself in anything you read. And to expect all of us to be like that is ridiculous.....

Ride(revisited)

I take the same train to work everyday, and yet as I walked in I had a feeling of sudden unfamiliarity. As though I was seeing through alien eyes. Scanning my co-passengers. Thinking to myself about them. Their uncomfortable moments, their day jobs, their struggles and their drifting days. Funny we never make conversations with strangers anymore.

There was customary silence between the curt announcements being broadcasted. I could hear the ruffle of paper, strutting of high heels, even the vibrations of the base of Linkin Park from the iPod plugged into someone’s ears.

I am still taken in by the unusually flamboyant old Chinese aunties with their bright colored shoes, loose shirts with large prints, and matching cheap leather purses. They stood out in the crowd of bleak formal clothing which was sporadically jazzed up with fashionable accessories-retro-style tinted glasses, fine yet conservative jewelry, and tedious hand-bags. And then there were the anomalies, the deliberately drab or bold dresses, smiling exteriors, breaking the monotone of the sluggish days.

I gathered my bags, it was time to alight. I had forgotten to get the novel I was reading.

Chase

It’s almost palpable, this craving.
This feeling like my guts are about to spill
Frenzy of thoughts, and then stuck in doldrums, spinning, stumbling, my legs and brain.
I am chasing, this specter of a dream....

Remembering Jagada

In reply to Ammani:

She was born in 1940. The second of five children born to Vedaranyam Seshadri and Rajalakshmi ammal. She passed away after a brief illness in November 2006. How will Jagada be remembered?

Vedaranyam Sheshadri was a veteran freedom fighter, much respected in and around Srirangam. He and Rajalakshmi lived a comfortable if not luxurious life with his pension. Now Jagada was not a very normal kid in her times, she reverently read about the long struggle her father had been part of, and gave speeches on how she was going to change the course of the nation when she was 14!

But things changed when she was married away after her 19^th birthday. Her marriage was important as three other sisters were next in line for marriage in quick succession.
She accepted the decision, which also meant she had to move to Mayiladudurai and the end of any hopes of a political career.

And then one day, she created Sunanda the social activist in her story for Ananda Vikatan. The thread of sequels became her schizophrenic reality, as she penned on through languid afternoons. Jagada’s husband proof-read her stories, took notes, and added his two cents worth.

Sudandira Naadu- the youth group of political activists prided themselves with the mission of restoring freedom to ‘Free India. They mobilized public opinion, held political awareness forums and led demonstrations. Megha the founder was a well known spokesperson and devout socialist. When Megha returned one day to find a courier from her source in a local magazine, she immediately opened it. They must have sent it a month ago, but her All India tour had kept her busy.

When Megha reached Jagada’s house, there was chaotic activity everywhere. Jagada’s husband walked her to a far veranda as his grandchildren were creating a ruckus in the backyard and there was bickering in the kitchen. It was nothing like a house in mourning.

“I am looking for Mani, the writer.” Megha said after she was asked for coffee.
That would be Jagada, my wife. No one knew her real name, I am surprised you have come this far seeking Mani. But Jagada is no more.”
“Oh", she paused."I have read Sunanda’s story, infact grew up with it.”
They sat in silence for a while. The two people who would remember our Jagada, and find their courage in Sunanda’s courage.

Poster boy

Old Mahabalipuram Road was awake at 5 am, not groggy but warmed up. There was activity in all corners milk vans rushing, newspaper piling and tossing, vegetables arriving in crates, and the chattering at tea kadais. Suryan FM was blaring at the street corner and the DJs voice was competing with the Ayyapan songs playing at the temple further down. Fumes rose from the coal-black tavaas, along with the sushh of the spreading maavu. Ravi sneaked closer to it for some warmth, his eyes barely open he held out his fists and rubbed the warm fingers against his face. There was a burning feeling in his stomach, the watery black coffee his mother gave him every morning still didn’t agree with him. He fished out a piece of groundnut sweet from him pocket and munched away to the municipality office.

He was asked to wait at the steps outside, while the peon went in to fetch some posters. There were few dozens of them, big and small with huge prints and pictures of the MP. Ravi was pre-occupied with thoughts of the biryani at Kannan hotel he could buy for ten rupees. If he finished posting all the posters, he might be able to sneak in for the new Rajini movie at the theatre down the lane. He whistled aloud balancing the rolls of paper on one hand.

He mentally thanked the big man who was going to visit the locality the next day, these important events always brought many small jobs that paid well. Tomorrow he would come back and hover around the office, and see if he was needed for any chores. He didn’t know how to read the bold words on the poster. He walked from one wall to another shooing cows, and sticking the posters on lamp-posts, walls, gates and all corners. He wanted to finish the work quickly.

The clouds gathered all of a sudden and he looked at the sky with dismay. What if it rained? Will the fat man with the big purse pay him for the posters? There was bustle at the street corner as a group of youth struggled to put up the long wires studded with red bulbs on both ends of the street. The wind blew hard, and the poles where the bulbs hung began to wobble. Ravi saw the fat man shouting orders and looking at the sky with his fists folded on his waist.

Notes:
kadai- small stalls set up on roadsides
maavu- batter from which dosai a south indian dish is made