Trigger-Sad

 

The way the tube-light reflects on an aluminum table-top in a deserted room. 

The taste of the water in the taps of a particular city you visited on holiday.

The smell of slightly rotting mangoes fallen on the ground beneath a mango tree in June. The squelchy and freshly tarred road, slightly damp with the first rains.

A voice, permanently frozen in a grainy recording that just came up on Shuffle. The background noise of hawks crying while you played the guitar and she sang.

The feeling of curling moist sand between your bare toes. Tiny clods breaking up into tinier clods only to be washed away by the next wave. You un-curl your toes to form new clods and then there’s that sinking feeling of settling a little deeper into the sand. The next wave washes away your new set of clods and you sink a bit more.

.

Sometimes they bring you succour. Sometimes they fling you into a whirlpool.

Sometimes they spring up on you when you least expect it. Sometimes you seek them out to drown out and over-write them, like picking an old scab on purpose.

Do you trigger memories, or do memories trigger you?

The Dark Heart of the Trees

 

We’re running out of time
You and I
But the harvest moon at least
Gets to come back here tomorrow.

Here,
Where our shadows stand now
Here,
Where you hold my hand now
Here,
Where our lips touch with ease
Here,
In the dark heart of the trees.

The gates will soon close for us,
You and I
But quiet dreams at least
Get to come back here tomorrow.

Here,
Where we collect fallen flowers to press in my books
Here,
Where we drive in never-ending circles around each other’s heart
Here,
Pretending to be hunted at the water's edge
Here,
In a sack by the window way up high

Here,
The trees,
They aren't sewn up too tight,
Like you, not I

Here.
Over the tops of the trees
With their dark, dark hearts.

A Reason to Live

We often hear in passionate love songs " you are my reason to live ". This post was inspired by the book i am reading, Pachinko by Min Jin Lee.

When she grew old, her nest grew empty. The routine of going to the office had stopped with her own retirement. The routine of cooking and cleaning had stopped with her only child leaving home to start an independent life.

Now there is no routine and nothing to do either.

What does the woman now have to look forward to? That one video call everyday? The one daily interaction with the caretaker who comes to cook and clean for her every morning?

She's got no interest in hobbies. These are, after all, selfish pursuits, and she has truly believed this all her life.

Why did she do it? Why had she cared for her child so much? Was it selflessness? All done for the sake of the child's well-being? To make her child independent and happy?

Or

Was it the most selfish act in the world? To give her own life meaning by making the child the object of her purposes? Now that there's no child, there's no purpose. Now what?

Now What?

Cornflower Blue

Has it ever happened to you that something clicks into place when you least expect it? I've never had a favourite colour. I've had phases of Ferrari red, emerald green and jet black but somehow never settled on one. As a child, when someone asked me what my favourite colour is, i would be in a downright fix. Most others my age would have an answer ready pit-pat but i couldn't do it and I covered it up. As i grew older, I put it down to the fact that I'm nota visual person and also to my inability to commit to things. I slowly accepted that i was a fencesitter and would never have a favourite colour. On a recent flight (2022) from Hyderabad to Bombay i was mindlessly staring out the window listening to NU's Man O To, when it dawned on me...

My favourite colour was indeed the one i was looking at right then - the exact hue of the sky at 20,000 feet at noon in tropical India just after summer solstice. It's not a vibrant deep blue, not periwinkle blue, but a mildly watery and almost pastel blue, that is called Cornflower Blue. A tiny section of the sky had that exact hue that morning. A few degrees above and below, the colour transformed into something i definitely didn't find as alluring as this one. It's not that I've never seen that colour before in my life. But it's today that i got to know that this one's my favourite.

Riyaaz

"Riyaaz" is a term commonly used in Hindustani classical music circles. It loosely translates to “practice”, and is a big part of the guru-shishya parampara of music in India. Expert musicians swear by it and take it very seriously as a means of discipline.

My journey with Riyaaz

Lost in Riyaaz at Hostel 10 Music Room, IIT Bombay (2019)

Overall I’m a spiritual person. I believe in the linkage between the mind, body, soul and the world. Not out of blind belief or religion, but as a matter of experience. As a youngster, whenever I found myself at odds with circumstances, it was the practice of meditation that brought me peace. I was part of several camps at the Chinmaya Mission and the Art of Living, where I learnt some yoga and how to bring my thoughts and breath under my own control. We pay surprisingly little attention to our own breath! The results of meditation surprised me and I practised regularly. As time passed, I found it hard to be consistent and a large part was because it was plain boring to sit for long minutes just breathing and doing nothing else. My practice of meditation fell discarded by the path of life.

Around the same time, I began the study of Indian classical music under my guru Shri Mohan Pendse in Thane. His way of teaching was simple. He would give me a musical piece to study on the guitar, with basic instructions. After I had practised independently, I would have to play it to him. Only if he deemed that I had mastered it, would he allow me to take up a new musical piece.

We met once a week and at first, the pieces were easy to digest and master, given my in-born musicality. Soon I was ahead of my batchmates who had started learning with me. As the months passed, my guru kept ramping up the difficulty level and soon I was grappling with the musical pieces. I was foundering and generally doing poorly, sometimes unable to master some pieces in even three weeks. I took it seriously and decided I had to develop the focus these difficult pieces demanded of me.

I made a pact with my mind. For the duration that I sat down with my guitar to study, I would hold my mind steady. Nothing else was to exist in those moments except my guitar, the sound of the metronome and my book of musical notation. It was hard at first but over a few weeks it showed good results with my music. Along with this, I noticed the queerest thing: Tanvi ceased to exist in those moments of practice. I would lose sense of time and space when I practised guitar with this new technique. The end of the practice session felt like coming up for air from underwater, when all the world above suddenly broke into focus around me. Honestly, the feeling was quite familiar to me, straight out of my old days of meditation and I loved it. My musical performance certainly improved, but more happily, I was calmer and more controlled in non-musical fields too. One fine day, the conscious realisation of this came like a bolt from the blue: I had finally understood what musicians refer to as “riyaaz”.

What is Riyaaz?

Every musician approaches riyaaz in a different way, because different things work for different persons. Over the years, I’ve developed my own style too. Friends who know about my riyaaz sessions ask me how it works, so here it is my version.

Frequency

Happily, I love music, so I do riyaaz as often as I can. I play guitar almost daily, mostly because I like it. There’s no hard and fast rule though. On days when I’m travelling or mentally and physically tired, there’s very little or no riyaaz. On weekend nights, I set up my home studio and do a deep-dive riyaaz session late into the night #saturdaynightriyaaz.

Riyaaz while travelling is a luxury. I loved visiting a musician friend's place in Dubai where she has a home studio (2022)

Duration

There’s no fixed duration for my riyaaz sessions. I do it until I’m comfortable and/or tired. The exhaustion at the end of a riyaaz session refreshes you (not sure if that makes sense, but it is what it is). Sometimes if there’s been a break of a few days, I am only able to do short sessions of ten to fifteen minutes, but as I get more regular, the sessions can last longer up to an hour.

Of course, if you’re serious about your music, this is small change and you should probably practise for way longer. For example, Kishori Amonkar, the juggernaut classical vocalist is said to have done riyaaz for 8 to 10 hours a day. I’m just an amateur musician but since I enjoy my riyaaz, my #saturdaynightriyaaz sessions are MUCH longer than my usual, beginning around midnight and sometimes even going on until just before dawn on Sunday.

My guitar Esmeralda at a #saturdaynightriyaaz in my home studio (2022)

There is a concept of "Brahma-muhurta" in yoga, which is the period that is supposed to be the best time to meditate. It occurs about an hour before dawn, so around 5 am. There are many theories about why this is a powerful time to meditate: theories involving the circadian rhythm, brain wave patterns, hormonal patterns etc. I don’t know if they are true, but it sure is a quiet time with no distractions. I especially love doing riyaaz in this time if I can stay awake until then. Um yes, I’m not an early riser, how did you know?

What to play

Whatever the mind feels like. In my case, it could be anything from Bollywood music to Hindustani classical to avant-garde electronica. Often, I will compose my own music during a riyaaz session (and promptly forget the composition when I end it). Some people prefer guided riyaaz under a teacher.

At a guided riyaaz session with my guru Shri Mohan Pendse (2015)

My favourite riyaaz though is with Hindustani classical music, not just because it was the first kind of riyaaz I experienced, but mostly because raagas also have a set of rules that you need to follow, a little bit like playing hopscotch amid the notes. It’s a lovely mental workout. Besides if you know the musical systems, you can choose a raaga to match your mood fairly easily because the ancients have it all mapped out for you already.

Since I play multiple instruments, I can add another dimension to my riyaaz; something like choosing a language for that riyaaz session. Every instrument has its own specialties and tricks that you can harness, be it the guitar or keyboard or bass or voice or a computer-based synthesiser.

The most important thing is to not judge yourself while playing. The session is supposed to be exploratory, helping you to push your internalised boundaries. Your fingers on the instrument, your foot tapping the beat, and the eyes reading the notation must be in sync, but most of all, your mind must be keyed-in to the emotion or idea that the music needs to express. I am not very good at this part of it, but I try.

There are some physical impacts of a good riyaaz practice too. I’ve noticed that my breath tends to align itself to the beat. This is good discipline and if you’re attentive, you can tangibly notice it making a difference to your overall well-being over time. Needless to say, the guitar is also quite a physical instrument. It requires and maintains posture and muscle tone if you pay attention. I am sure it burns some calories too!

Riyaaz outside music

From the way riyaaz made me feel, my guess was that it was probably not restricted to music. Curious, I talked to non-musicians who might feel the same way about things they are passionate about and a large proportion reported the same feeling of “being in the zone” while they practice their skills. Top examples I heard are gymming, walking, running, writing, journaling, even data analysis! (Nobody reported the same feeling while watching Netflix, reading or studying hah!) Now most of these are solo activities, but I don’t suppose it’s restricted to that. Someone might also associate riyaaz with group activities such as team sports or theatre or playing in a band.

Neeraj Chopra practising balancing with his javelin definitely looks like riyaaz to me

In Conclusion

Overall, riyaaz is a cool concept: highly recommended for building focus, maintaining health and at the same time developing expertise in a skill. It’s all about finding out what works for you. Go give it a try!

A Web Log

Content: The section that used to be for 7 marks out of 10 on high school Letter-Writing language exercises. The remaining 3 marks were for format, salutations and correctness. I usually did well on those composition exercises because I was concise and discerningly to-the-point.

That was 2002. It’s 2022 now. Content means something else now. First of all, it’s pronounced kaun-tent. Secondly, it’s very wise in its new meaning. Let me tell you how. I recently read a book by the Dalai Lama where he said that the biggest realisation of monkhood is that there is nothing in everything. Not that nothing exists, but that there is nothing in everything. This was eye-opening and I realised that it is so very true about kaun-tent. At the core of it, there is nothing in all of the Content online: vlogs, reels, movies, blogs, videos, or any online media.

Yet it exists.

Yep, I’ve always been this nihilistic about my blog. I acknowledged in the last decade itself that my writings here were to amount to nothing special, just another voice among the millions. I stopped blogging for this very reason. Why add another voice to the clamour?

Recently I realised that it was a mistake. I had lost a golden opportunity to document so many things over the last decade. I am the caretaker of a small but important library-archive at work and have witnessed first-hand the utility of record-keeping. Not only is it very pleasant and sometimes amusing to revisit, but it also helps to recall forgotten things. The mind can only hold so much at a time. You need to maintain a log somewhere, somehow. And (surprise, surprise!) that’s what blogs are: web-logs.

So here it is: 

A web log of me.

My blog.

Rickshaw Number 885

Some of us like to read biographies. Here’s one.

Young Ali was a bright student at school in a sleepy town near Salem. Always among the top three of his class, his favourite subject was Science. His father was a labourer at Salem and he lived in a small house with his mother, three brothers and five sisters. Life was not easy, but he rather enjoyed school.

When he reached ninth grade, his father commanded him to back out of school and begin to earn. Ali was extremely put out, but did as he was bidden to. He joined a mechanic’s shop as an apprentice and began to learn how to fix cars. The owner shortly had a nasty run-in with the police, and Ali got frustrated with the whole set-up. He ran away to Salem and from then on to a place called Byculla in Bombay, the City of Dreams. It was 1971.

Bombay was large beyond his dreams. For nearly ten days he roamed hungry in the by-lanes of Byculla, until he was picked up by the police. He spent the next one month in the lock-up, not daring to believe his luck that he would actually get a meal every day in there. He preferred this life to life out on the streets. Soon, he was called up to the bada sahib, for questioning. When it was learnt that he was merely a runaway from Salem, the sahib released him from prison with a warning to not get involved in illegal activities in Bombay.

Hungry and alone again, Ali made his slow way north and reached a place called Mulund. A cycle-repair shop took him in to fill tires with air for a meager sum of eight annas a day. It was enough to buy him a vada pao and tea. He was bright, worked hard and was talkative and polite to customers. Within three days, his seth raised his salary to two rupees a day. Ali continued with his old diet of a vada pao and tea every day. Saving became a habit by default. By the end of the month, he was earning a princely sum of fifteen rupees a day. He worked at the cycle shop until 1987, and then flew to Saudi Arabia in search of a job. In the meantime, he had got married to an orphan girl in Mulund. He worked in Saudi for five years as head mechanic in a factory, returning home once every year during the holy month of Ramzan.

Tiring of life away from his now-growing children, Ali returned to Bombay and started driving an auto-rickshaw for a living. He carried on until 1997 and his thirst for adventure was rekindled. He made his way to Rome and from there to Egypt, all the while working as a mechanic. From Egypt, he went to Libya. He was an efficient and hard worker and Libya treated him very well. In 2002, he got home-sick and decided to visit India once again. He missed his flight back to Bombay, and was told that his visa had expired and was not renewable since he was over fifty years of age. Ultimately, he managed to make his way back to Bombay, but now he was tired. He brought out the old rickshaw again and has been riding ever since.

---------------------

The man is Mohammad Ali Shaikh, the 61-year old driver of auto-rickshaw number 885 from Mulund (as he made me note, for future reference). This was his story, which he narrated over a journey from Powai to Mulund one rainy afternoon last week.

His oldest son completed his MCA last year. He works for a monthly salary of 40,000 rupees in an Indian firm in Andheri. His youngest son, Mohammad Idris (named after the King of Libya, Gaddafi’s predecessor), is now in the ninth grade. Idris is a bright student, scoring “ninety-five-ninety-eight” marks in mathematics and science. Here is one ninth grader who is going to continue his education for sure.

Ali is a born story-teller, with expressions and voice modulation to suit (with a very faint Tamil overtone to his pucca Bombay accent, interspersed with chaste English). Yet his eyes remained on the road and his rear-view mirror (Mumbaikars will appreciate how rare this is), as he explains at the Powai signal, that he didn’t switch lanes then, because the traffic police would have booked him for what he called a “blind cut”. In one breath, he expresses bitterness that he couldn’t study enough and then proceeds to explain that he had been to Libya (“L-I-B-Y-A”, he spells out. “No, no… not in Africa. Africa is a continent. That’s different.”). He points out that he is older than he looks (“I have dyed my hair black, you know!”) and still going strong as a man ten years younger because he has lived an honest, hard-working life.

In another four months, Ali will retire from driving the auto-rickshaw and return to his home-town near Salem. Life will come full circle for him.

He explains that honesty and hard work are important.

Stay away from addictions, he advises.

Above all, he says, education is most important. Don’t ever forget that, he says. Study well, he says.