Wednesday 14 October 2015

Digital Dystopia: The Extra People

(c) Radhika Iyengar
Maren Sarenkov is a kindergarten teacher. She is waiting in line with 14 other people outside Florence Gould Hall in New York, to participate in Ant Hampton’s highly anticipated immersive performance, The Extra People. There is excitement in her voice when she exclaims, “I’m looking forward to completely forgetting myself, and just following what someone else tells me to do!”
The Extra People is a part of Art Hampton’s novel Autoteatro series, presented as part of the ninth annual Crossing the Line festival. A site-specific performance, it invites the members of an audience to assume the role of actors. Through a series of instructions, the participants execute given tasks, and the piece develops as they go along. They perform for themselves and for each other. In this work of experiential theater, the boundaries between the audience and the performer disintegrate.
Before you proceed, you are handed a piece of paper with a printed number from 1-15. For the next hour, this number is your sole identifier. Hands on the side, you form a queue with 14 others in ascending order and march inside. Each person is handed a set of headphones and a ‘hi-viz’ vest uniform. The fluorescent vest functions as a unifier; the participants merge into anonymity.
Photo Credit: Britt Hatzius
Through headphones, a child’s voice dictates instructions, telling you what you must perform in an enclosed theater setting. The voice seems foreign. It’s monotonous, opaque, and disturbingly fractured. You begin to wonder about its source, and the voice reveals: “There is no ‘I’ behind the voice.” It has been digitally manufactured.
Lucy Simic, a participant and a theater artist, finds the introduction of the synthetic voice fascinating. “I am curious about the choice of using a digital voice,” Simic says. “I believe Ant Hampton’s goal was to create an overall alienating effect, which is quite different from a previous show I saw of his which used recordings of human voices.”
The themes of conformity, alienation and post-apocalyptic worlds pulsate through Hampton’s piece. The first instruction the participants hear is a simple one: You must be seated in the theater within 90 seconds. When you enter, the space is dark, empty and still. Nervous and excited, you can barely see your feet as you scramble to find your seat. The voice continues to instruct with measured cadence. The instructions dictated are peculiar but precise: Act like you are asleep; raise your hand; stand up; and so on. As you perform the tasks assigned with abrupt, unrehearsed gestures, the lights go on.
Photo credit: Britt Hatzius
On the stage, the setting seems barren, ominous. Large sheets of white paper patterned with outlines of faceless people function as the backdrop. Across the floor, 15 unidentifiable human beings sit wrapped in ash-grey colored blankets. Suddenly, as though in a trance, they spring up and start twirling. You realize that they are wearing headphones and are following their own set of instructions. Rebecca J. Collier, a professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, New York, recalls feeling a bit taken aback when she saw the people on stage. “I was surprised to see them, even though I knew they were going to be there,” she says. “I thought it was interesting to see the lines between performer and audience blur. It did feel like [I was] performing for them—when [I would] raise my hand and stand in my seat—and that they were performing for me.”
From shutting your eyelids and raising your hand abruptly in the air, to performing a momentary dervish-like twirl with your arms outstretched, head covered with a blanket—the orders are outlandish and absurd. But in order to be a part of Hampton’s “immersive experience,” you must follow them. You must listen, understand and perform. You must conform.
Participants go on stage and perform. Photo by Britt Hatzius.
How does it feel to have the freedom to think and act for yourself temporarily suspended? Sydney Viles, a pre-school teacher says she felt “mechanical and unthinking (sic) during the performance… but, I also enjoyed being relieved of my agency.”
Rebecca J. Collier felt the experience was therapeutic. “For me, it was kind of relaxing to be following instructions,” Collier says. “It took the pressure off worrying if I was doing the right thing.”
David Helbich, a 41-year-old artist from Brussels, says he felt “controlled to the point that I found it hard to concentrate on the experience.”
Perhaps what Hampton is subtly prodding us to think about is our increasing dependency on technology; of relying on it for guiding our actions and making up our minds. The synthetic voice is reminiscent of Apple’s Siri feature. Through The Extra People, Hampton is perhaps imagining a post-apocalyptic world where technology will instruct our movement and we will become mere numbers.
***
This piece was originally published on Columbia University's Arts and Culture Beat.

Friday 4 September 2015

Stories from the Street


Kadrivel Chidambaram, or 'Sammy' as the New Yorkers know him, serves great South Indian food on 50th St West, Broadway. A man with an engineering degree, he settled in New York after his business in his hometown, Madras (India) collapsed. Now he makes lovely sambar vada and masala dosa for New Yorkers right outside the Time & Life Magazine building.

If you are in New York City and in the mood for some comfort food/home-made South Indian meal, stop by and pay Sammy a visit. He's really a sweetheart and will talk to anyone who lends him an ear!

{NYC, street diary, street food, street stories}

Friday 7 August 2015

A Song for Eliot

So this is an old poem of mine that I discovered recently while revisiting a now defunct blog of mine. When I wrote this, I was going through a "O, i love T.S. Eliot" phase, and I had written this in absolute awe of the man. Cut to present, I've tweaked the original a bit. Hope it reads better, for it is now in my eyes, more complete. 

*

Winter mornings:
The stale smell of cigarette
and sky bruised purple.
I muffle, biting into your skin.

The morning groans
stretching its arms
across the sleepy city
Its breath pressing against filthy windows
and empty streets—
waking up in its own waking
to a handful of illicit love affairs

Promises crawl against one’s bare back
scratching against the skin like broken porcelain
searching for answers.

Time comes undone
like paint peeling off the walls
fragmenting from a whole
slipping into dark, nameless corners
and beautiful misery.

Outside,
the streets linger on
walking, swerving, smoking, mulling
running, hiding, halting, waiting.

They whisper tales
of sinful nights
that walked
dressed in handsome winter coats
and big black hats
knocking on doors
waiting for someone
to welcome them in

When they leave
Emptiness slithers inside bedrooms
through filthy windows
left half-open

She reeks of pity
and stale cigarettes.

She moves
across crumpled bed sheets
and coils around my neck

I muffle, biting into her skin
waiting to come undone.

***

{poem, eliot, dreams, emptiness, love, note from a forgotten diary, heartaches, memory}

Wednesday 5 August 2015

That Girl


There's something about a book and a girl reading it in a cafe. She appears to be distant; a mirage of the unattainable. She's smart at instinctively tucking herself in a corner, next to a beautiful French window, allowing the sunlight to fall on her face--not too much, just enough. Behind those reedy-framed spectacles {that'd probably leave behind a dimple on her nose} she hides, poring over her book. Her body is folded into a slouch and her head is tipped as she thumbs her way through the book with the grace of a hummingbird. You try to catch a glimpse of her bright, almond-shaped eyes that are set beautifully apart beneath a fringe that curtains her forehead. But she's far too occupied to respond to your telepathic advances.

She looks up only to order a mug of hot chocolate and requests the colour of the mug to be yellow. You wonder if someone is joining her. She looks at her watch, shrugs and returns to burying her nose into the book. Below the table, her toe dangles a misty-grey leather chappal with practiced precision. You wonder what she's reading--Science fiction? Epic wars? A self-help book? Biography on Lennon? 1984? The Shadow Lines? Chetan Bhagat? {You promptly erase the last option; she doesn't seem the half-girlfriend sort--you have far greater expectations from her, figuratively and literally}.

There is something about a girl reading a book, you tell yourself. But there is something else particularly about her. She seems to compose an air of remarkable self-assurance. The kinesics are there. Surely, she's charming and witty too. At cue, your mind drifts off to another world: you wonder what life would be like if the two of you were married. Would your mother get along? Would she get along with your dog, named Cat? You're almost down to considering the names of your kids--S and R {the alphabets would be determined by you, she could choose the names}.

With the sound of a door opening, the day-dream seems to be thrashed with a loud thud. A woman rushes in with the flame of golden sunlight behind her. "Kavita!" The woman shrieks. And the love of your life looks up, throws the book aside and leaps across to kiss her. They hold each other for considerable time and then kiss again.

You shrug and return to your lemonade. 

{stories, love, scribbles, books, literature, hot chocolate, tiny visual tales}

Sunday 26 July 2015

Musings and Other Stuff

And time slips by
like a lover desperate to leave your bed
assuring you with promises that you will have all of him the next day

{musings and other stuff}

Saturday 18 July 2015

AMY - The Documentary

Photograph by  Leslie Hasler
BAFTA-winning filmmaker, Asif Kapadia has crafted an interesting niche for himself. He’s gained an admirable momentum for producing stirring biopics about icons the world has loved and admired. Archival footage forms the backbone of his directorial language—ingeniously, he pieces together footage shot at varying points of time, to mold a narrative that is truthful and visceral in its account of retelling the icons’ story. His eccentric and arguably ground-breaking style has brought him much acclaim, celebrating him as one of the most gifted documentarians of contemporary times. With praiseworthy films like Senna and The Warrior under his belt, Asif now takes on the role of telling Amy Winehouse’s story.

For Amy, it was drama from the beginning—a tragic tale built for mass consumption. She had mastered the art of translating her grief, her romantic ruminations and her disappointments with men, into beautiful, haunting music that turned into Grammy-winning anthems overnight. Amy was an enigma—a seductive songstress with an absurd hairdo and a tiny frame, but a voice that could hit you like a cannon ball. The television and the tabloids transformed her into a dysfunctional goddess—crowds worshipped her, followed her, imitated her and fed on every morsel of information they could get a hold of through the media. As Nick Johnstone, author of Amy Amy Amy would go on to write, ‘Everyone wanted a piece of her.’

Through his documentary, Asif, like a relentless scalpel peels off layers of this larger-than-life persona to present the real Amy—the bruised, broken, utterly human Amy. The film takes you back to the starting point and maps her tragic trajectory. ‘You already know the ending,’ Asif says, ‘but you don’t know why that ending happened… the film tries to make you understand what happened in between for her to reach that point.’ I spoke to Asif about his stunning biopic (which released this July), on the musical superstar who burned out before she even began.

Photograph by Alex Lake
Before venturing out to make a biopic on Amy, what was the relationship that you shared with her? 
When I started making the film, I knew her songs, I knew her voice, I had the records, but I didn’t know her—I had never met her. I normally make films about subjects I don’t really know too much about; I learn on the journey. Now of course, I know a lot about her—I’ve seen so many of her incredible performances. What is interesting about her is that it’s not just the voice, it’s her writing. For me, the hardest thing ever is to write something that is original, emotional, personal, which has depth and humour. You will be surprised to know how funny and intelligent she is! When you meet her young, she is so different to the person who becomes famous. I think that was a big part of her journey. The more I sat down and watched her [footage], the more I learned about her and felt it was a story that needed to be told, because people have such a skewed idea of who she was, and there is so much more to her than just the voice.

How did you immerse yourself into her highly intense, glamorized world? Where did you begin? 
Well, I just started talking to people. I interviewed people: we would just sit down and have a chat; there was no agenda. I had a lot of questions, but I never got around to asking them. I would just let them talk, and through talking, one thing would lead to another. Most of the people I spoke to had been carrying a lot of pressure and pain inside of them and nobody had ever spoken to them. Since I was not a part of her story, because I was not connected to her life or was in the music business, they felt free to tell me what they really felt. It became almost like this therapeutic process for them. I interviewed over a 100 people. During those interviews, they would tell me, ‘Look, I have this video, I have this photograph, I have these phone messages’—and they’d share their memories [with me]. So the film is not only their interviews, but also the memories they have of Amy. They shared material that they held very close to themselves, and they trusted me enough to give me that material to put in the film. So the film is a construction of the material that I discovered as I was going around talking to people. In a way, this is a film within a film.


Amy was constantly followed—the cameras catapulted her into stardom, the cameras brought her fame, and it was this fame that unfortunately dictated her downfall. Now, it is the footage from these cameras that tell the world her story. 
Yeah, I mean the cameras are a big part of the story. When you see the film, you’ll realize that it starts off with the camera being friendly towards her— the videos are basically footage shot by her friends, her first manager, her boyfriend—you know, people who she knows and loves. However, slowly as you go along, her relationship with the camera becomes darker and in a way, more violent. You can see her becoming more and more afraid of the camera, because rather than friendly people filming her (and her filming herself a lot as well), there are people who are filming her to sell the footage. So it becomes paparazzi—you see people using the camera to humiliate her. So the camera, rather than being a friendly tool which helps you take a photograph and make a memory, becomes the very means of attacking her, and that’s very much a part of the movie experience.

Could you talk a bit about who Amy was as an adolescent? 
I would say that you just need to read the lyrics of her songs. The clue is already there—she’s talked about it all. It’s very hard to explain, because there are so many elements to her. So there is no one obvious answer. It’s her real life which is much more complex—family, friends, boyfriends, husbands, depression, drink, drugs, falling in love, being dumped by the one you love—so many things happened to her that created insecurities within her that manifested themselves in many ways. Then she became famous and was surrounded by people, and she wondered, ‘Are they here because they like me or because I’m rich and famous?’ And if you’re not sure of yourself, if you are not confident, then you don’t know whom to trust. So these were all issues that were intrinsic to her life.

The irony about biopics is that most of us already know the individual’s story. More importantly, we know how it’s going to end. In the case of AMY, we already know that the narrative has a sad ending. Was that a cause of worry? 
Well, that’s where the filmmaking comes in. Of course you already know the ending, but you don’t know why that ending happened. It is the beginning that is really important. You know that her story ends a certain way, but my questions always are, ‘Why did it happen? How did it happen?’ And that’s why I made the film, because it made no sense to me as to why someone would die that young in this day and age in front of our eyes? How was it possible? Why didn’t anyone do anything to stop it? So the film is really going backwards from that point. You already know the ending, but the film tries to make you understand what happened in between for her to reach that point. Amy’s life was very complicated—she was incredibly intelligent and complicated—so the film became my way of giving you enough of the back story to understand how things transpired.

This interview appeared in Platform Magazine's July/Aug 2015 Music Issue. 

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Rain and Earthworms

It's the beginning of the monsoons and I am looking outside my window. The drizzle seems to resemble the gentle sprinkling of caster sugar. The road wears a pale, melancholic look which is occasionally dotted by a few umbrellas scurrying about in anonymity. A motorbike skids by, making an annoying spattering sound. Suddenly the sky, as though it has slipped on a cape, seems dangerous and menacingly dark. Trees sway indecisively like a pendulum; the wind hisses through the leaves, swooping down and spiralling into a crazed dervish swirl, enveloping granules of dust and abandoned plastic bags.  

During the monsoons, my world shrinks, more or less, to the size of my apartment. It's a self-imposed exile that is characteristic of an adult life. Children behave in a manner contrary to thatthey lack the peculiar self-consciousness of playing in the rain that one learns as one ages. When I was a kid, I would head out the moment I heard a thunderous announcement. I would swoop down the dingy L-shaped staircase of my apartment building, sliding my palm across the dusty railing, shouting names of friends at each floor in the hope of an immediate congregation. The moment I'd reach the ground, I'd rush towards the open courtyard with my arms stretched out, my chin tipping upwards, my mouth open and my eyes shut.

I would squat near puddles and peer wide-eyed into the shallow pool to find an earthworm, or two, floating languidly. Imagination is a peculiar gift. In your head, its landscape is gigantic, fertile, sprawling. It's where mythical creatures and the fantastical reside. My friend had once whispered into my ear that earthworms were in fact, siblings of a great serpent, and if I ever harvested one from a muddy puddle and took it under my care, it would eventually grow into a huge serpent and would have magical powers. That I could travel to school riding a gigantic serpent was in itself quite a kick. Just the mere imagery of that would trigger off other certain fictions in my head, where I would end up imagining what it would be like ruling an empire of earthworms. It's a disgusting and rather stomach-churning thought, I know, but at the age of five, becoming the sovereign of a land, no matter how slithery or slimy your subjects are, is nothing short of an achievement.

So while other girls my age would burst into cacophonous shrieks, I remember dipping my fingers into the puddle to pick out a rotund earthworm that wriggled and wrestled to loosen my grip. It eventually succeeded and fell tepidly on the ground. A sense of pity [and defeat] washed over me and I let the poor chap crawl away. 

That was the time I conceded that ruling over a legion of crawlies was perhaps not the best idea.   

{monsoons, notes from childhood, memory}

Tuesday 30 June 2015

Four,

things about me.

To those who care (and to those who don't, but will read anyway):

1. Before I wake up, I nuzzle into my pillow, squinting my eyes, unwilling to allow the sunlight peel them apart. But when I am ready to face the world, I love cracking my back like a dog--dipping my belly, lifting my tush, making my back into an uninterrupted arc, while splaying my hands in front of me, allowing the fingers to press against the mattress. It's one of the best possible ways of waking up.

2. Tea.
makes.
me.
happy.
It's the sugar really that sets me up for the day. When the first drizzle of monsoon hits the ground, I rush to the kitchen to start the burner. There is something about having chai while watching water languorously slide down a glass window.

3. I fell in love with a boy while being visited by an owl in a garden. I had never physically seen an owl before that moment. And never since.

4. I lost my two front teeth while trying to gain my momentum on a swing. I was five and competing with a girl who had two pigtails and a crooked nose. As the excitement escalated, so did my speed and before I knew it, I had slipped and nosedived into the gravel. I took the teeth home and hoped for the tooth fairy to visit me. While my brother was seven and already growing skeptical of the tooth-fairy, we decided that if she did visit, we'd pack her into an old shoe box and never let her go. Maybe it was her sixth-sense or maybe she lost the way to our home, but she never showed up.

Perhaps some other kids caught her in a shoe box.

***

Friday 26 June 2015

In Transit

You know, when big things come your way and you have to face a massive, undeniable, inescapable change, don’t run away. Accept it, face it, embrace it, because no matter what you do, it’s coming towards you like a man-eater of a storm. Either you allow yourself to be uprooted, dislodged, and let the winds juggle you like a miserable circus ball, or you muster your courage and say, “Come on baby, I’m ready for this hell of a ride!” And you use the winds to propel you and take you to places you never even imagined you could go.

Be ready for movement, ready for something phenomenal to hit you, and though you don’t know what it is, wait for it with open arms. You’ve got to let your guard down, you’ve got have no inhibitions, just this raw mortal energy and the will to give it your all—to become one with this party called life. 

Wednesday 8 April 2015

Rana Dasgupta's Capital: Shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award

(c) Radhika Iyengar 2015

Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First Century Delhi
is an ambitious departure from Rana Dasgupta’s previous work. He maps, with acute patience, the turbulent history of a city that was built, torn apart, ravaged and rebuilt over centuries—the aftermath of which provide important brushstrokes to the portrait of contemporary Delhi. The book shifts back and forth chronologically, juxtaposing modern-day events with the city’s macabre past in order to supply a wider context to the construction of an informed narrative about modern Delhi. The pages are littered with historical playbacks that sweep across centuries—the magnificent Mughal reign, the British raj, the catastrophic 1984 riots, the economic liberalization, which are juxtaposed with eye-opening personal accounts of those who inhabit this enigmatic city from varying economic strata.
In the light of the book recently making it to the Crossword Book Award shortlist, I revisited an interview I had done with him not too long ago.
With two award-winning novels behind you, what prompted you to write about Delhi, its people and its history?
I would say that two things prompted me. One is that, not much has been written about contemporary Delhi. Through books, we know a lot about early-independence Delhi and we know a lot about Mughal Delhi—these are Delhis that appear again and again in literature. Even contemporary writers, who write about Delhi, find themselves constantly going back to the Mughal period because that’s what is ‘literary’, in a way. But I felt that the city I was living in on a day-today basis, what I was reading about in the papers, what I was seeing on the streets, needed to also be described and recorded, because it is a very intense reality. It is a reality that all of us in our lives try to understand and discuss why things are the way they are. And I thought that this was a book-length project. It required you to go back to the traumas of partition and even pre-partition history to understand that. The other thing was that in Indian history, the rise of Delhi in the last 20 years marks a new kind of period. What happened to us in the post 1991 period is that we saw a new kind of Indian commerce where big businesses were attached to Indian politics. There was a drift of the business people to Delhi from all over the country and outside, to knock on the doors of politics— to network and do deals with politicians. So I thought it was important to describe and document this as well.


What informed your decision to take a journalistic route while writing about Delhi? 
By the time I started writing the book on Delhi, I had been living here for a decade. I felt that it had been a very extraordinary decade, not just in my life, but in the life of the city. And this needed to be written about. I always felt that it needed to be written about in non-fiction terms, because I just thought it was more extraordinary than to make up. I mean, I don’t know what you felt about the stories that you read, but these personalities cannot be persons who could be made up, and that’s the whole point. 

In one of your essays, you describe Delhi as ‘an impenetrable, wary city.’ How did you get an impenetrable city to open up to you? 
Well, I think, it’s like a club. I mean, it’s a club kind of a city, which is to say that it is impenetrable to the outsider, but when you have lived here for a while, then a lot of those doors open because you start to have your own networks and you begin to know people. So like a club, if you have the right introduction to somebody then the people are quite open. So as I have said in the book, people are amazingly open when their friend says, ‘Speak to this guy.’ I spent about 18 months just being passed from one person to another, asking people for their stories. I also think that people really like to talk. One of the things that is common to all the characters that appear in this book—some of them are rich, some of them are poor, some of them are intellectual, some of them are not—is that all of them have a very, very intense inner life. They are conscious that things are changing every day. So when I actually sat them down, they told me about how their family functioned or how they made money. There was a lot for them to say since they had been having this inner monologue a lot. So it became an ambiguous kind of a relationship, almost like a therapist, where it wasn’t clear anymore who was driving the conversation or who was getting the most value out of it. Also, I was a mere outsider to these people. I didn’t go to school with them, so they knew I wouldn’t judge them in the same way the people who knew them personally would. I was kind of an empty figure, which made it easier for them to talk about intimate things.

Delhi has been described as a very cold city. A lot of the voices that you bring in from different pockets of Delhi are extremely bitter. Were you conscious of this? 
I am aware that I have written a very dark book about Delhi, but it’s probably because it does strike me as a very dark city. What I think is that there is a difference between the intimate and collective. What I find in the city is that the intimate space can be very warm. People are very good at maintaining friendships in the city; they take a lot of care of their family and friends. At home, guests are hosted extravagantly. And this is married to a deep wariness of what is outside the home. And I think that fear and suspicion is related to the very violent history of the city, where every generation has seen the collective rise up in insane ways. I mean, of course 1947 was the most traumatic of those moments, and again so was 1984. So when one talks about the city, it’s important to talk about the collective experiences, which is where I find a lot of darkness, a lot of fear, a lot of bitterness. And therefore, I think one of the reasons why the desire for money is so big in the city is because with money comes some kind of insulation from the city. You can employ people, you can live in guarded neighbourhoods and you can basically not feel the worst effects of this kind of fear and apprehension.

{delhi, books, non-fiction, crossword book award shortlist, rana dasgupta, author, writing, literature}

Thursday 26 February 2015

Memory


Memory is a strange thing. It will find you in the most unwitting times, when you’re not expecting it. The tapping of the rain on the window, the discovery of a wrinkled leaf pressed between the pages of a book, your favourite song playing on the radio as you drive back home after a long day at work, the rustle of a sari…
The rustle of a sari — I remember ma wrapped in a sari — of her quietly walking into my room; the crackle of the starch as she sat down beside me when I was half-asleep. She always looked beautiful: long dark hair falling on her face, which she tucked behind her ears before pulling the chaadar away from me. The fan always stirred with a lazy whrrr and the sunlight from the window filled the room with a lovely light. I remember her eyes gleaming, her face lit up, earrings pinched to her ears, her spectacles sitting at the crown of her head like young girls with shiny hairbands. I’d mumble, whine, curl my toes and cringe my nose, hold my throat and cough so loud that I’d almost scare the pigeons off the window pane. But my drama was pointless—somehow, she always managed to send me to school.
*
My father had big, strong hands — the kinds in which my tiny chubby hands would disappear every time he held them, and I’d always feared that they've been eaten up. So I would wriggle my hands out every time, just to make sure they were still there. I remember going to school, skipping and hopping with my hand wrapped around his sturdy finger, my long hair galloping on my back, the pleats of my skirt ballooning with every thump of my feet, my shoelaces untied, and my socks which my mother made me pull up every morning before sitting in the car, sagging at my ankles. Very few kids like going to school. I probably belonged to that “strange” lot. I loved the drives with my dad before he dropped me to school. We would sing songs throughout the journey. His big, puffy red cheeks which I always thought were filled with cotton candy, his thick black moustache which curtained his smile, his wisp-like curly hair spiralling out and spiralling in by the wind from the pulled down windows, his thumbs drumming on the steering wheel as we sang: “I’m Henry the 8th I am, Henry the 8th I am I am, I got married to the widow next door, she’s been married 7 times before and every one is a Henry. HENRY. Henry the 8th I am I am, Henry the 8th I am!”

These excerpts were a part of a collaborative project titled Memory: A Visual and Musical Performance for DesignxDesign closing party at Alliance Francaise, New Delhi, 2015.

{memory, childhood, stories, Diaries, autobiography, notes from memory, prose}

Thursday 22 January 2015

The Light Bag


One of the major reasons that rural children drop out of schools is because a lot of them are forced to study under the dim light of a candle or they have to make do with kerosene lamps at home. While some homes have electricity, frequent power cuts, especially at night, could result in a complete blackout to a child’s future. This is where the Salaam Baalak Trust steps in. The Light Bag is an interesting contraption: a specially designed polyester school bag for children, its pouch is equipped with an LED light and a solar panel (imported especially from China). Through the attached solar panel, the LED light is charged during a child’s trek to school and back. Since many children attend open classrooms, the bags are charged throughout the day. At night, the bag’s pouch can be out-turned to function as a makeshift lamp.

The brainchild behind the design is Anusheela Saha who approached the Salaam Baalak Trust, an NGO which works towards improving the living conditions for underprivileged children. The idea of developing the Light Bag sparked when her maid complained about the frequent power-cuts in Delhi and how people in the slums were affected by it. "I started thinking about a way that could make lives simpler for the slum dwellers. The fact that India is a country that has plenty of sun and fails to provide sufficient electricity, were the two dots that I connected," she says.


Anusheela worked with the Salaam Baalak team to come up with a design that was simple, cheap and sustainable. "We did some research before we started. The solar panels and LED had to be weightless to ensure that the bag wasn't too heavy to be carried by the children. We also had to ensure that the bag had the right kind of space to hold school books," she says. The Salaam Baalak Trust is now looking for crowd funding opportunities for the bag to be manufactured in larger numbers and reach more children in other regions.

{design, design for a cause, innovation, cheap and sustainable, product, arts+activism}

Tuesday 20 January 2015

Fire + Paper

i still remember
the way your tongue
mapped my mouth

and searched the contours
of my body
filling crevices
of my broken self

trying
to make me whole again.

i remember
how we so easily
fell into each other
entangling ourselves
weaving our present
to make a past

like a photograph.

and i remember
how you told me:
we were too alike
too volatile
too much--
in ourselves

so when we were together
i was fire
and you, paper

and we burned--
both of us,
consuming each other
hungrily.
uninhibitedly.

and now i lie
in the ashes of your memory
in the catastrophe we created
in the masterpiece we created
like two artists full of soul
on a rampage

the funny thing about memory is
it’s not ephemeral

like the ashes that crumble in my fingers
darkening the tips of my fingers
that try to trace the contours of my body
like you once did. 

{love, heartache, poem, writing, remembering, memory}

Tuesday 13 January 2015

For Women Who Are Difficult To Love



By Warsan Shire:

you are a horse running aloneand he tries to tame you
compares you to an impossible highway
to a burning house
says you are blinding him
that he could never leave you
forget you
want anything but you
you dizzy him, you are unbearable
every woman before or after you
is doused in your name
you fill his mouth
his teeth ache with memory of taste
his body just a long shadow seeking yours
but you are always too intense
frightening in the way you want him
unashamed and sacrificial 
he tells you that no man can live up to the one who 
lives in your head
and you tried to change didn’t you?
closed your mouth more
tried to be softer
prettier
less volatile, less awake
but even when sleeping you could feel 
him travelling away from you in his dreams
so what did you want to do love
split his head open?
you can’t make homes out of human beings
someone should have already told you that
and if he wants to leave
then let him leave
you are terrifying
and strange and beautiful
something not everyone knows how to love.

{poetry, writing, beauty, women, inspiration, love, longing}

Saturday 3 January 2015

Unhooking the Bra

When I turned twelve, I was expected to wear a bra. It was an unceremonious introduction into the grim world of what I thought was adulthood. The rite of passage was defined by the act of being held by the hand and led discreetly into a lingerie shop. It did bother me that while my brother casually sat half-naked on the bed watching television at home, I had been removed from the playground where I played ball with the boys, to accompany my mother to the shop.

The first ten minutes were spent observing her deliberate upon which cup-size would best suit me. She then gestured the woman behind the counter to come forth and take measurements. The lady scribbled some numbers on paper, nodded a confident “hmm” and turned around to dislodge a few boxes that towered behind her. She pulled out an assortment of bras and swiftly arranged them with the deftness of a Blackjack dealer.

I paused, my cheeks beginning to take colour. My knees buckled. I didn’t know what make of this momentary paralysis. So I stood and stared, wide-eyed, biting my lip, my fingers reaching out to crunch the hem of my skirt. I glanced vacantly at my mother who was now looking at me. It felt as though she had become a head taller and I had just bit into the pill prescribed to Alice.

“What maa?” I whined with a pitch of bored irritation that masked confusion.
“What, what?” she twittered. “Pick up the ones you like and try them on.”  
 “Buutt…” I whined again, this time more nasal. 
“You want me to come with you? Chalo, I will come with you. Where is the trial room? There? Accha. Let’s go.”

And off we went, carrying five bras in tow. By now my cheeks had turned crimson. I walked to the trial room looking down, avoiding the eyes of the male staff that followed me.

That evening, I was gifted my first bra. Well, bras. “We’ll buy two,” my mother had informed the woman, before slanting her head sideways to say, “that way, you can wear one every alternative day. For starters.”

It wasn’t the idea of wearing the bra that bothered me, it was the idea of getting used to it. I didn’t like the faint pink marks the straps left on my shoulders, at times mimicking a zigzag pattern or a simple thin line, depending on the cut of the strap. I didn’t see the point in strapping on an extra piece of clothing, especially in the unforgiving heat of summer.

One day, I returned home fuming. I forced the door shut loudly behind me and marched in to see my mother. Ma was working in the kitchen. She was whipping an egg with a strange determination not to stop.

“Ma,” I mumbled, half surprised and disappointed by the tone I had chosen. Words seemed to collect like rough pebbles in my throat. I could hear my heart pick up pace. Ma looked up, the whites of her eyes flecked with red. She had complained of not sleeping well the last two nights. “What?” she asked, still whisking, the fork scraping and keening against the steel bowl. “See this…” I turned around to show her my back and then turned again to face her. She looked at me and blinked. The whisking hadn’t stopped. A few moments later, she bunched up her brows and said, “I’m sorry, what is it that you want me to see?”

I was flipping now. “This!” I cried, turning around again. Sweat had plastered my shirt to my back. “Can’t you see? All the boys are laughing!”

Ma narrowed her eyes and leaned over to inspect what the fuss was all about. Then she trotted off to the other corner of the kitchen and returned with a shapely onion.

“I’m listening,” she said, rolling her fingers over the vegetable, the filmy purple skin crackling under.

“They noticed it today. It was just so hot. I couldn’t help it. And they noticed it.”

Ma was now slicing the onion, thin ovals of white collapsing haplessly onto the chopping board. “And,” I continued, desperately, “Arjun pulled his t-shirt to his chest and put it behind his stupid large head and said, ‘Boys and girls are not the same! So you cannot play with us!’ And I said, ‘Of course I am same!’ So he said, ‘then do what I have done!’”

Ma pursed her lips and turned towards me. Her eyes were looking directly at me now, not distracted or shifting like they were a few minutes ago to estimate how much kitchen work remained. Her voice was calm when she spoke, “Did you do it?”

“No,” I said coldly.

She responded with a succinct “hmm!” and then picked up the knife, pinched the flimsy slices together and progressed to dice them with deliberate focus.

Something inside me sagged. “Maa,” I whined, making one last attempt to draw out some sort of attention from her. She finally placed the knife on the granite and turned towards me. Her fingers traced the contours of my chin and then affectionately nudged it upwards. “I know how you feel. I had a tougher time getting used to it when I was your age, but this is a part of growing up. You will just have to accept it.”

“Buutt...” I began to reason while sliding a finger underneath my bra to attend to an itch. “It’s not fair. Why don’t boys wear this stupid thing?”—I called it “this stupid thing” till my 16th birthday; I was too embarrassed to call it anything else—“Why can’t I pull my t-shirt over my head and jump around like that monkey Arjun?”

In my head, these questions seemed logical, and they were. Ma agreed, lending a nod or two to the conversation, before eventually sighing and reiterating, “It’s just a matter of getting used to.” Hers was an upbringing dictated by social conditioning and now, she was transmitting it to me. “After a certain age girls are expected to wear bras. People talk otherwise,” she said. Who were these people and why did they care? And why was it okay for boys to parade about shirtless, while while girls had to be relatively dressed conservatively?

Years later, Lisa Esco asked the same questions through her film, Free The Nipple. The popularity of the film, possibly for its controversial content, was undeniable, but it led to the emergence of a greater, more powerful movement called #FreeTheNipple that is now making headlines, breaking ground and well, unhooking bras. Have a look and follow it if you’re not a part of the movement already.

{gender, growing up, non-fiction, jabber, notes from a forgotten diary, #freethenipple}