Do not go gentle into that good night…

Dylan Thomas knew what he was talking about when he penned his powerful paean about dying to that stage of our lives which forces us to come face to face with ourselves with terrible clarity – the stage when the curtains are coming down on us

Open Culture, that wonderful website of all that is interesting on the web, posted this article – The top 5 regrets of the dying

At someone at my stage of my life, at the launch-board of a ‘career’, so to say, what this says especially strikes a chord – especially when we become very much aware of the much philosophized word – choice.

The choices that we make everyday – that extra hour at work, the postponement of the vacation, that extra effort to drop in a hello, choice to let something make us happy or not, the laziness to do what we like in place of what we must. All of this shapes us who we become.

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Boat Grandma etc

What is it about an old place where you spent your childhood? No matter where and how far you go, physically or in time, evoking the place, through snatches of conversations or a special smell in the air, seems to bring on a magical sense of primordial peace and a clawing yearning

What is it about the old place then? What is it that is invoked when an old incident is recalled? What is it that makes up nostalgia anyway?

Visiting Nivedita Enclave, where I spent my entire childhood and teenage years, to attend one of my oldest friend’s ‘aiburobhat’ (literally a bachelors last lunch!!), the day before he left for Kolkata to get married, I visited one of the ‘old timers’ of the colony, a couple who live near my house. The woman I know only as ‘Nouko dida’ (boat grandma), a name I made up because she used to make paper boats for me when I was well, very small.

Our memory has a way of creating a frozen slow moving images of people whom we meet seldom but many times over a long time – an image here, a glimpse there. Mostly I remember Nouko dida as she used to watch me and my brother play cricket on afternoons, standing by her window, with one hand slightly stretched outside. The earliest memory of her I have is in a warmly lit drawing room, place buzzing with conversations and laughter and clinking of glasses and spoons. I remember a lamp on the side and her sitting on a chair beside it. I don’t remember if she made a boat for me then but I like to think that she did.

That was probably more than twenty four years ago. Two decades has been a short time when the days are counted, a very long time when memories are measured. Twenty four years is time enough to see a lot of certainties depleted, a lot of childhood comforts turn into cold realism, a lot of invincible grown-ups people to magically transform into mortals.

When I visited them now, we were glad to see each other as we had been glad to see each other always. Only I would not get any paper boats made for me. This time, for them, I, the visit, was the comfort and the giver of joy. Twenty four years is a long long time. Long enough to reverse who gives what

They would be leaving soon. In March, to Kolkata. For good. The housed that housed the boat grandmother would be sold to someone who knew nothing of that 5 year old who loved getting paper boats in the house. They were moving because they did not feel a part of the people around anymore. Too many people have gone away for good. The new ones, they just didn’t know how to be friends with, don’t know whether their child would love paper boats.

Memory is populated with people and people only. Memory of a mountain, of a brick wall, of a lane is linked with who you were with, even if that person was only you. When the people go, the bricks and paved stones become just that

Maybe that is why I was seeing ghosts – of all people who had walked the streets of Nivedita enclave and would never walk again, as I made my way outside the colony, where my car was parked. But new memories were being created. My friend was coming back from Kolkata with one…

The Game for Life…

World Cup is gone…long live World Cups!!!

Its only been a few days since the void has started to get filled up..the void that inevitably comes after the end of what is arguably the most awaited one month in four years. A month when TVs are switched on no matter what the hour is and you hold your breath as fame and infamy exchange hands within seconds…

World Cup South Africa 2010 was the sixth world cup for me and over the years, no matter where I have been or what I have been doing, the one month becomes a time when nothing beyond the action in front of me matters. I must have sounded like a zombie on the phone with G since at that point of time my heart beat with Forlan and his magical left foot…

In life, we have various yardsticks with which we mark our time and which we use to look back and say ‘Aha’, that's when I was there and did that.

Four years is a long time for someone who is growing up…a time when circumstances around you are shed and you come out as a completely different person. Your thoughts and opinions about the world around you and the people in it change. You have moments when you grow up suddenly, you have heartbreaks, get over them (sometimes overnight), you read books that change you for life, you meet people who mark you for life and you discover things about yourself that you may or may not like…

But in the end, when the next world cup comes around, you have done your time and its time sit and cheer for your team. You also realize that like so much of your memories so many cherished players have become a part of the past.

For me, World cup started with Maradona and the Roger Milla dance,  a world cup that I ended with tears along with Maradona. I remember the incredible vibe around my house as the tournament started. Its my great luck that I was born in a family where everyone watched sports together (especially two things – World Cup and the other – Ganguly batting!!) and that was like a virus that I caught onto…

That was Italia 1990 and the world cup that I remember wolfing down magazines (this was 8 years before internet came into the house and atleast 10 years before any more-than-humble surfing can be done) which offered any information about what was happening around me. I remember reading and re-reading about the heroes of the past – the Peles, Garrinchas, Cryuffs, Lev Yashins, Kempes, De Stefanoes, Eusebios, Pushkas ; the heartbreaks of the past – Netherlands’ defeats in  consecutive finals with arguably the best team, Hungary’s defeat in the finals after being unbeaten for four years and subsequent decline after the revolution, Garrinchas death in penury and so on…

By the time the next one came up, old heroes had slipped and new ones came up, probably my first lesson that sports taught me about life – things change and we must go on. Milla’s dance was gone and Maradona was soon to go, in shame. Aryton Senna was to go too, in a car crash. That world cup was to be of Romarios and the dance was to belong to Bebeto and the tears belonged to Roberto Baggio…

I saw that world cup half in Calcutta and half in my home. My dad, uncle (who had gotten married in between the cups) and brother stayed up to watch the finals and I remember recording the final on VCR. Baggio’s thundering kick which missed the post by a mile will probably always remain indelible in my mind – a sign of how you can be the best player in the world and yet be remembered forever for   one bad penalty kick. The golden cup is unforgiving to those who fall by the wayside…

1998 France was the time when it was my tenth boards. But studies were to take a complete break as Zidane unleashed his magic to power the Les Blues to their first world cup, the first new champion since 1978. This time the tears were Brazilian and glory was of the team that signified ethnic unity in a former imperial power. Almost a fitting end to the last world cup of the century which saw its first in 1930 between two world wars!

2002 S Korea and Japan. I was done with my school long back and had started on a good boy’s career path– engineering after a hard fought battle with various entrance exams. There was a creeping feeling that there were too many distractions in life, time seemed short, a good career seemed suddenly a holy grail to a perfect life and life seemed to be suddenly in too much of a hurry.

Yet, everything was swept aside as time stood still for that one month. The hero of the last millennium, France, went out shamed in the group stage without scoring a goal and Brazilians and Ronaldo had the last laugh. Asia came into its own with S Korea reaching the semis defeating Italy and Spain. Africa again flattered to deceive as Senegal went out in a heartbreaking golden goal decision. Asia had its first world cup and Indians had to be content with the knowledge that India had once qualified back in the 1950s.

2006 Germany saw me with my first job after engineering in Kolkata (Cities, even if names, too change between world cups!!) working away as the greatly glorified job of being the genius third world technical problem solver for US MNCs, at a company that prided itself at having no Indian clients and whose employees prided in working in a company that was listed in NASDAQ.

Ah well, all cynicism were swept away as France, the model of ethnic unity 8 years before, now torn by ethnic strife and rise of anti-immigrant politics, looked to heroically regain glory with a visibly ageing team. A task that they almost magically grasped before footballs most famous header took it away from them. I had to hurry home from work to watch the matches on a small 14” TV in my one room guesthouse in Salt Lake. The good part was that I did not have to make any excuses to hurry home. Bengalis being Bengalis, it was an unspoken and tacit agreement throughout the city and indeed the whole state!!

In a sign of how rapidly things can change in four years, especially for those ‘starting off in their lives’, the next world cup was to see me in Shimla after having completed my MBA and having already started to feel a bit older after a heavily eventful four years. But the excitement has only grown, visibly. Forlan’s free kicks and Spain’s golden boys made the four year wait more than worthwhile. What made it even more enjoyable was the realization that I may not have been around to see it at all!!!

The gap between each World cup was filled to the brim with life that can only be appreciated by a rear view mirror. I have lost and gained so much – so many thoughts, so many convictions, so many dreams and so many people.

Each world cup seems a metaphor to me of life that goes on – enjoy while it lasts. You wonder where you would be as the next opening game kicks off and with whom. But I can promise one thing – I would still be loving every minute of it!!!

del.icio.us Tags: football,soccer,world cup,growing up,sports,history,india

Of Defiance and Death – Pinter’s Nobel speech..

G had recommended the Nobel acceptance lecture by Harold Pinter. I got around to reading it after a while…

And boy was it a read…there are some things you read once in a while that sends your blood coursing down your views and leaves you throbbing awake, with all all your senses pounding away…This article did the same for me, having read words of such power after a long time.

The words turn from being dreamy and philosophical at first to savage and bitterly laden with irony by the time it comes near the end. It does not end on a sweet or hopeful note, which is the best way it could have ended…and it has a poem by Pinter which I had not read before, termed “Death”…beautiful!!

The best antidote to banal and tabloid reporting that besieges us everyday…an article for keeps…

Read it here

Of course, an added reason I like this article is that one of the poems that has affected me profoundly is cited here - “I'm Explaining a Few Things” by Neruda…the power of the words in that poem seem tailor made for the article…

A hurray for Pinter…you are sorely missed…

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End of an era – Viva Chetak

Ah well…all good things must come to an end, especially if you don't want to own the good thing anymore!!!

Bajaj will, from now on, manufacture only motorcycles, finally bowing to market tastes. With that decision, a product that signified India for decades will pass easily into history pages – the “Hamara Bajaj”, the Chetak.

The scooter that was the beast of burden for the common man carrying whole families on its seats, the acquisition of which (after sometimes years of waiting) truly became a neighbours envy – owner’s pride. The scooter which with its Italian inspired design ruled the Indian roads long before auto majors discovered the market in the country. A scooter which when your father let you drive was when you became a man of the world, a world suddenly free…

That's the nations nostalgia, a collective nostalgia as it were. Anyone above the age of 23 or so will have a special personal memory of the scooter that looks impossibly frail and might I say cute in front of the hulking bikes of today.

We also owned a Bajaj scooter, some 20 odd years ago. One of my earliest memories was the extreme thrill I felt of standing in the front, just behind the handles, my little hands on the dials, my hair buffeted by the wind against which my eyes squinted to see ahead, safe in the knowledge that my father was the captain and my mother the navigator. It was the most perfect Titanic moment (the hands outstretched moment that is – not the crash!!!) I ever had. I used to actually feel that I was flying without making any effort, tagged along by the Gods. Nothing I have done since has come close to that experience…

However I believe that it was time it gets consigned to our nostalgia. The Chetak was not made for the madly commercial world of today. It belonged to the world of movies like “Chashme Baddoor”. It belongs to a world when you actually loved what you owned because you literally bought it – EMI was not yet invented by financial whizkids, a world where cosmetics to make men fairer was not advertised on the TV, a world of sometimes impossibly grotesque fashion but also of rebellion. A world of limited but meaningful TV, not the infinite variety of trash today…

Ironically, It belonged to a world where streets were emptier and you could have done with more power in the engines, instead of in a world where you have all the powers in the world but no streets to drive them on!!!

Of course, scooters have been reinvented – the Activa for instance. But for us Indians, it will never be the same.

The song of Chetak remains humming on in our mind, if only as a dirge. An elegy, even, to a world vanished forever…

Viva Chetak!!!

 

del.icio.us Tags: Bajaj,scooter,India,marketing,product,nostalgia,Chetak,current issue