Strangely Selective Safai

"Maybe it's the time of year - or maybe it's the time of Man?"

Well - safai men for sure!

This is one of those archetypal posts for Diwali. Written in 2016, it could have been for just about  any recent year in this chaotic life of mine. Let's just hope that in 2020 we get to create a new archetype and provide readers with a new and far more reassuring and delightful form of entertainment. I have fought the good fight for way too long - it's time for a well-earned win!

I wonder at these discrete acts of “safai”(cleaning) that open up some zones of the house while others remain in darkness. What is it about dust and dirt that they level down so perfectly but invariably refuse to depart as one? Are they the ultimate demon or do they come to impart a profound lesson. Writing hasn’t been working as well as I wanted these past two days. My head is in a whirl as this is the fifth or sixth rapid-stream I managed to trap and lock away on the page for posterity. Even your next moment is posterity. And it is already the remote past before you can even look it in the face. But sometimes you never confront that posterity as you stay indefinitely in your freeze.

The senses are bombarded as the eye picks up the little things that need to be shifted around and put in their places. The things that need to be doled out to these boys/men for cleaning so we don’t miss out on anything. The pockets of dust Param missed because he worked in the dark and had very little time to do that stupendous task that had been waiting for him all of four months.

Today I have a kitschy table all of six feet by four and loaded to the very edges, like an Old Curiosity Shop in its own right. Come to think of it this might make a hit as installation art! There are some attractive objects on it, some intriguing ones, some nondescript and quite inappropriate on any kind of table. Some are in clusters of like colliding with like, while there are zones with more disparate contenders sparring for space. There are little pockets of dust that snuck away from the sweep of Param’s fingers. There are tell tale signs in grooves. But all’s good. And there is room and opportunity on/in this fascinating 6x4 mall for a fair amount of Diwali prep.

This storage-cum-kitchen-cum-dining-cum-study-cum-dumping table has metamorphosed over the years. It has played more roles than any table could have dreamt of. I’m sure no kid can ever come up with the autobiography of an old table for a school essay of the sort that this one seems eager to pour out every time it awakens from somnolence with a clean-up. It suddenly comes to life and I start to hear stories from the past and the future.
I have pictures of it draped in fancy cloth and set with exciting dishes and crystal goblets awaiting my mom’s 70th birthday dinner. It is whispering to me to get going so I can celebrate and organize a 60th birthday repast for myself. It tells me I don’t have a lot of time. It asks me whether I can dig out the heritage linen that has borne the brunt of many delightful feasts. It asks whether there will finally be room to set the rosewood chairs around it, with new seats fixed all over again out of some material that King Rat doesn’t feel like pouncing on and goring with his fangs.

It is dreadful to have a hand that says “don’t clean up after yourself, I am waiting for my moment of revenge”. Indeed my hand is in a continuous state of revenge. You realize how often you need to wash your hand or get it wet or dirty it up when you are the sole arbiter of your fortunes. Once in a while I sneak in my own revenge using my ingenuity and the weapons gifted by my Devas - Sailesh, Paramesh and the two Ravis. And numerous other friends and help mates who rejoice in my glory, though they may be struggling to balance their own lives.
Indeed there are times when I feel the whole world is rooting for my book, for the perceived and projected glory of my home where past meets future in a cocktail that nourishes as it excites. The battle of the table and its rescue from demons that have captured it, continues. This Kali Puja the battle will be enacted in part all over again, in the ever-recurring hope that by the next one, the battle would have been won.

Somehow, from some hidden recesses, the heritage home is emerging in slow but sure rebirth! Enjoy the pictures. I leave you to figure out just what kind of art installation/exhibit/shop/fairground/warehouse this may be. It looks a cross between Northern Park pre Puja and Northern Park post-Puja and a pantry being emptied out before the pest control arrives. Just what phase of evolution/devolution this may be is only just revealing itself. Enough to say it is an archetype, a dynamic mandala for much that has happened and much that will happen yet.

PS1 The hand that finds periodic mention, has been assailed by all manner of allergic rashes

PS2 Karan Vohra has said "The picture is so nice". Y'all had better appreciate it!

His Poochness and An Oothappam

This one was one of the early Pages from September '16

It somehow never found its way to the collection of Pages re-invented as posts on this space in '18. It seems like there's no time like now to bring this one into its own. This is for the ones who find my haphazardness and moody musings a fun ride. There are more coming up from the early days and I will pop them out in a random order. Stay and play!

26/9/16  - Pre Puja

The pages have been delayed thanks to my tucking into a massive coconut Uthappam from Anuradha. I am breaking the over-3-week abstinence from outside food, to risk it. I hope the remaining 20% of the hand-under-recovery will take it well.*1
I am a person who has a reasonable amount of stuff outside and it just doesn’t work out for me if I am forced to stop it altogether.
Part of the motivation to haul myself out into a sweaty pre-evening was the desire to sweat – yes that sounds funny but I have been struggling for so long with a dry skin that I felt it might just be the remedy to help my skin breathe and recover. Well I forgot that I had moisturized during the day and when I got back from my wanderings I was actually a slippery, dripping mess. A few minutes in the shower after drying out the sweat helped cool me down and I attacked the oothappam. On my walk home I was actually writing this post in my head.
My purpose in heading out was twin. I wanted to check out the progress of the pandals. I was deeply disappointed.

The roads are a shabby mess. Tree branches lie felled around the trees (some kind of meaningless routine to get them out of the way of electric lines and a disaster each time it repeats) and people are piling trash atop those heaps of drying wood. It isn’t raining and these could mean a fire hazard. Mahalaya is two days away but the roads are more pot holed than ever.
A bored looking man is walking – yes walking – his hen on the vast field on which a team in blue pretending to be Team India are playing some form of cricket. Meanwhile a team of workmen are dodging them and trying to assemble the grand roller coaster whose pictures and videos were on CTT last year . A few bored looking men are fiddling around with nondescript strips of board in anemic white, being used to assemble a gateway of sorts to a box like pandal that appears nothing more than a rudimentary structure - some kind of framework with plastic sheets draped all over it. It has a four sided peaked roof. I have no idea what miracles they plan to work in the seven days they have in hand to deliver a finished products. On being questioned the men shake their heads and say they have no idea what they are helping build. “I suppose it will emerge as we work” says one of them. They look weary and not welcoming in the least. I move on thinking the clumsy mess of wood and fiber is hardly photoworthy. I move past to check out another pandal that looks sad and tired but somewhat more aesthetic.
I wonder what my fair city is coming to. It hasn’t even rained. I dread to think of what will happen if it comes down.

So I leg it back home, swinging the uthuppam along in my shopping bag, purloined from Parameshwar’s Moti. He fetches these goodies for me which she rarely keeps count of. As I approach the post office, dodging stones and rubble and a pesky mail van, I come across a sight for sore eyes. Yes it’s a pooch sleeping on a jeep. I get ahead of the mail van but it just keeps tailing me like a monster and I am forced to quickly skirt around the jeep. Meanwhile pooch has stirred and I curse at the lost opportunity to click him. Guess what I see as I get in front of the jeep and turn around to get my bearings. His Poochness has dodged the disturbance from the van’s honking and revving, to jump on to the roof of the jeep and promptly fall asleep. Well that wasn’t a jeep at all but I couldn’t find a better word for that thingy – one of those non descript SUVs. A jeep had personality. My mom learnt driving in one!

Writing this has diverted me from the uthappam but fortunately coconut uthappams from Anuradha taste good cold. And their heavyweight chutney even better when fried – yes fried!!

Signing out at 6:32 and attempting for the 10th time to send the pooch from the phone.
Whew – loaded! Chloe can be such a pest.

Edit 7:07 pm
Want to add that the outing was possible also because three days of doing this exercise(Pages) has energized and motivated me. I feel more like my usual self, with my eagerness for life and writing restoring itself. Also I have friends wanting to hang out with me for Puja and that's a good sign. I had just done lamenting my loneliness and even if noone else reads these, I believe the universe is doing so. Now I hope the universe heeds my plea for household help during those Ravi-less days.

Am rushing out of here once and for all because every time I enter edit mode, I have a strong temptation to fix typos and punctuation, not to speak of redundancy in sentences. But that might defeat the purpose of the exercise. At any rate I have those basic instincts that drive a writer towards a finished product, indeed a product with finesse!

*1  Current readers will be over familiar with the dreadful allergies I have been beset with over the past 3 months. The hand I keep referring to had a major outbreak of rash in '16. Looks like '19 has turned out to be a similar year. These hands pop up in almost all my posts as does a phenomenon called The Leak. In the absence of these two monstrosities that have hounded me, I'd probably have written not 51 posts but 5.1 books in the 5 years of Unwritten's lifetime. *1

PS1 For those friends who may have missed the intro on my FB profile - "I write, therefore I am" :)

PS2 Parameshwar and Ravi Jr are the two stalwarts who keep this mad hatter's house from actually turning into a madhouse - NOT!

PS3  This has been minimally edited for readability on 20/10/19