The Last Mughal by William Dalrymple: Impressions

19.01.08

After months of grappling with William Dalrymple's THE LAST MUGHAL, I finally put to rest the life and times of Bahadur Shah Zafar in my head and the near 500-'strong' page book.

Nearly four months ago, the book was bought by me to combat boredom at the airport due to an obviously delayed flight; and was largely a result of forgetfulness. The White Mughals by the same author was what I had been intending to buy for a while. But in the airport chaos, what remained with me was 'something' Mughal and instead of a fair maiden on the cover, the old frail Mughal of an emperor came home with me.

Since then, evening after evening- preceded by long days at office - I took one tired step after another through the palaces and bylanes of the Delhi of 1857 as Mr. Dalrymple guided me slowly, throwing often unnecessary references along the way. The learning and earnestness of research of the author though, is commendable.

With my patience, or rather lack of it, the journey seemed quite cumbersome more often than not, as the narrative moved back and forth from the confines of Zafar's palace to the cubicles of the different British officials' offices. Shattering the heroic credits attributed singularly to the 'Pandy' Mangal Pandey for the 1857 Uprising, Dalrymple etches with clarity, the confusion and the causes of the rebellion. But the pace of the book was like the slow sizzle of moist firewood - never warm enough for comfort, never cold enough for frustration. The book neither allows you to abandon it nor read it on with full gusto.

I often contemplated putting away the book for good and very often used irritating excuses of lack of time and tiredness...the bottom line being - I WAS BORED! But as I said, the book never let off the gnawing and I kept returning to it to find out the grim details of the falling someone's fortune.

In the last one week, since I came home, I took to the book and the book took to me too - especially the poor dear, Zafar. One cannot help but feel pity for the eighty-two year old man who is as helpless against his falling teeth as he is against his falling dynasty. Stuck between being the symbol of power for the rebel armies of Hindoostan and a dependent-on-British-pension; between the royal habits of luxury and the glaring reality of poverty; between his favourite queen - the manipulative Zinal Mahal & her son Mirza Jawan Bakht and his eldest children, Zafar is ground into pathetic grain throughout.

Dalrymple successfully makes one oscillate between feeling joy when the rebels have an upper hand and victory seems close and agony when the Brits bounce back and drive 'us' out. The narrative tugs at the most sensitive humanitarian strings and one cringes with equal disgust as the Pandies ravage the properties and modesties of the British and later the British inflict with twice the vengeance the same wounds. The brutal murders, cuttings, hackings, shootings and hangings make your stomach churn even as the stink of heaped and rotting corpses waft up to evoke nauseous feelings. The tales of courage on the one hand and murder and treachery on the other makes one love and hate humans at the same time.

Dalrymple beautifully sums up the book pointing to and co-relating the fundamental problems of the Hindu-Muslim divide and the Islamic fundamentalist-Western imperialist strife, making clear in the simplest way the most complicated situations of contemporary world politics...

Definitely worth the effort!

Thought spill

18.12.07

It is one of my ‘must-write’ days again – one of the rarer instances when my need to write takes priority even over my need to sleep. I’ve started alright, but there is nothing I have to particularly write about; yet so many thoughts/ideas are swarming in my head. So I’ve decided to follow my train of thoughts…

Right now my first thoughts are about V who is sitting here, right next to me, checking his mails (an 800 something backlog!!) The guy’s fantasy of birds is fascinating. His eyes seem to be completely drinking up those bird images on the monitor.

We are precisely only a month away from being man and wife - lawfully. We got our pre-nuptial enquiry at church and application for marriage registration at court done yesterday. In exactly a month from today, i.e. the 18^th Jan ’08, we will be civilly marriage – having finished just one of the several weddings that we’ll undergo. A reaffirmation of certain vows will have to be made again (in the Hindu way) and yet again (in the Catholic way) over the week after. Having to confirm in the eyes of the various societies we’re part of, what we have already affirmed to each other.

I was reminded yet again of the number-game that destiny has been playing in the constant with us. 18^th January – a day of the month that I’ve always strongly associated with A. That was supposedly the date of my first meeting with him. Now when I marry V on the very same date, each of my previous associations will be erased – completely. Thereafter, every 18^th will belong to V. Sorry A, looks like even my future doesn’t want you in it, even as memories. And of the dates of our weddings, 17^th will be the last one- a date on which V confessed his “love” for me – the final seal. Wow! This is really uncanny – down to the last detail. If these aren’t signs from up above, I ask, what else are? There could be no better example of a ‘meant-to-be’!!

Life in the last month with V has given me a preview of what I’m getting into – a preview I quite like. Sure we have had our share of disagreements and near fights, but it looks real nice from where I stand today. I hope I am living up as much / more or less to the visions of V as he is to mine. Doing it all together – cooking, eating, sleeping, washing dishes, watching movies – oh yes, it has been good.

Part of the reason for picking up this journal today was to write my review/reflections for the movie 15 Park Avenue – a movie that V and I watched together and one that made for a lot of soul searching stuff. Also, we’d promised each other that we would write reviews of movies that we see together which would be part of our creative learning process. Yes, the movie has a lot to write about, but procrastination has led to a fainted memory and I’m afraid the review will have to wait till I’ve watched it again and refreshed my remembrance.

Yet another thought that’s competing for the number one spot as I’m nearing tomorrow is about meeting Aj. Aj will be in town tomorrow and I’m supposed to be meeting him. This will be my first interface with him – months after I got to know him. From where it started to where it has reached now makes for very unsettling sentiments. They bother me. V knows, for the greater part, what Aj is all about and thus justifiably uncomfortable.

I know what I want, where I stand and where I’m headed – very sure – for the first time in my life. There still is some anxiety though. Is it because first times cause fear? In this case, the pertinent first is my surety of myself. I am tough to trust in my own eyes…or am I?

The force of vacuum

26.9.07

I’m back to my baby again…my journal I mean. It has been quite some time since I’ve written. Feels like homecoming - homecoming for comfort, for refuge. I’ve come back to my journal to seek refuge. Come back to it, pressed by the force of vacuum.

V left for Bombay (yes, I prefer it to Mumbai) today. My confidante, my confession box, my punching bag…GONE! For two whole weeks!!! It was only natural that I turned to my journal for my release. I wonder if it is this way with all writers. Are inspirations always had in moments of crisis or emptiness? I’ve not written in a while (just turned the pages to see that it has been a precise two months and a week); didn’t feel the push, not even slight traces of that mad urge that I’ve sometimes experienced. The spoken word has taken precedence in V’s presence. With him, everything felt is almost immediately ejaculated in words – spoken ones, heard ones, understood ones.

My relationship with V has obviously changed in the last couple of months since we started seeing each other. Only yesterday, we were discussing how the frequency of our written communication has reduced to a zilch in so short a time. I was fretting over how the nature of our communication has changed so rapidly implying perhaps that we don’t communicate as much as I would like to. Only a day later, today, I realise where my argument was flawed. As V points out too, only the mode/style of our communication has changed; the volume hasn’t. It has increased rather. Today, when he’s not around, my awareness of his absence overwhelms me so much that it has pushed me over the brink and made me gush on paper. And as always, it’s proving therapeutic.

This gap, this vacuum – his absence has also made me see clearly what he has come to mean to me. Beyond that breakneck speed that our relationship is moving in, beyond those plans of a proposal/engagement/parents-meet-parents/and wedding, beyond my defensive statements of “It’s not like I can’t live without him, blah, blah, blah, beyond it all, I realise that V is much more. I love him. I respect him – immensely. Respect him for what he has become, for what he is and what he chooses to be. I adore his openness to the new, his willingness to learn. There is so much promise in imagining a life with him – a life of learning, a life of teaching. A life of looking forward to a myriad possibilities, encouragements, criticisms, fulfillments, pride, and not to say the least, a life of mature love. I love him for questioning me till my confusions have cleared. I love him for not allowing me to take for granted even those things that I rightfully own. I love him for making me constantly compete with myself – to want to grow, to be smarter, funnier, better read, more knowledgeable. I love him because he taught me his not-so-good jiving and admitting and admitting that he doesn’t know it too well. And well, so much more. This is what I miss – this is the name of this vacuum.

Huh? (Undated, untitled and…incomplete?)

Sometimes I wonder if my bouts of restlessness represent anything greater than the classical example of an idle mind leasing itself to the works of a devil. It has gripped me again today – that unnameable, inexplicable restlessness - a restlessness that gives rise to unreasonable irritability, causeless questions and useless feelings. The devil’s workshop theory came about because today has been one of my perfectly idle days – not one thought worked upon, not one word written. The urge to write here, in ink, in this journal makes itself felt as and when these spells make their rounds.

It started quite early this day, as I was riding back home, I guess. First it was just some memories of A that floated up to my consciousness as casually as much as my being is capable of casualness. I started from being mildly amused at their appearance in the first place and more so at their timing. I was just returning from V’s place and my head was ‘supposed-to-be’ filled by his thoughts. Yet, A continued to insist on being present on the first line of my thoughts, leading to my amusement turning to discomfort. “He must be thinking about me…it’s just those vibrations...” I offered to myself my current favourite argument, but in vain – I realised a little later. I busied myself with getting ready for work and got to office in seemingly good spirits; and must have pushed A to the back of my mind for a while.

With the passing of those unbearable empty hours, the thoughts re-emerged. This time around, the form of the thoughts had apparently changed and with it had changed the accompanying feelings. It wasn’t A anymore – not at least distinctly. I cannot quite place what thoughts might have buzzed in my head then, but I know I can tag those feelings as a mounting irritation - irritation and anger and malice towards everyone and everything. No one’s crossed my path hence and has therefore been spared of my reasonless ire – no one but V. One fearfully innocent message stating a fact was enough for me to explode and spew it all on him. I used the same tricks I’d learnt from him and regressed through the day asking a series of “whys” till it brought be back to the ride home. So, I find myself asking the question if it is a case of comparison.

(Dunno what I was thinking and the last bit makes no sense to me.. The facts are lost and so are the feelings..but the words remain – and I like them)

WHOOPIE!!!

17.07.07

I can’t stop smiling, giggling actually; and feeling ticklish in the tummy and silly. It must be happiness in all its splendour. Pure joy this must be. V said the words this morning. I knew he would eventually, but like all other things he does, he managed to throw me off guard this time around too. J That’s his style: inconspicuous, jet-speed hints (ones that you miss if you’re not on tenterhooks all the time), and a no-drama delivery. And it hits you like, BANG! When you’re least expecting it.

We were talking only last night about it; and he got me to believe that I was risking a premature admission or worse still, a belief of prematurity when he did say it. Yet another of his defences was that I was supposedly pre-empting his wanting to say it. Hah!

Um…well, guess I was, and I decided to stop doing whatever pre-empting means. I told him that it was hurting for me to love him and not have him love me back; but I didn’t say the words; haven’t said them yet, tra la!!!

I wanted so much to share this joy with someone and the effective choice turned out to be, as it always does, V. One call later, I’m settled. We have this strange trade of calm and restlessness that comes from him being inherently rational and me being inherently emotional. He gives me the calm, and I him the restlessness. He injects a thought, and I a feeling. Fair play and perfect foil.

But there are flashes of fear. But well, what joy hasn’t fear mixed with it? The fear of losing the worth of something attained so laboriously, the fear of altered meanings and the fear of an expected routine. I hope the ‘I love you’ doesn’t become as meaningless as a “heyyy” for me; again, for him too, again. I’m hoping with all I’ve got that V is not another one of those guys who become uninteresting the minute I get them to say the words. Damn! What am I saying? I know he isn’t one of them. This, as he puts it, is just one of the tinier missions of mine to get the whole of him.

A spiritual journey is what I’m offering him: a quest for him to integrate his self as a whole. I’m afraid there too. He’s rather complete as a man already. What if he needs me no more after completing his soul? But do I want him to need me? Or simply want me because he wants to. That has been a great honour and I reckon it will be so. I hope I also love him because I want him and not because I need him. Love ought not to be price paid for ones needs. I’ve paid it once. He’s paid it too. Thus, this time around, these words bring about a great deal of responsibility with them. I hope we’ve understood each other enough to respect that.

For this time though, I’ll just sit back and be happy, knowing that it is not premature.

Of butterflies: these and those

These winged creatures seem to be dominating my life right now: the nectar-feeding, garden-fluttering, fiancé-favourite variety and the tummy tickling ones. Myriads of butterflies touch and go my insides as I sit here waiting and worrying and imagining how everyone must be practicing their ‘helloes’. V is meeting babu (dad) today, and to say the least, babu’s meeting V. The two most important men in my life will have an interface today. I can only hope they emerge on the other side unscathed and open…

Everyone’s scared. No one knows anything and everyone’s trying to appear educated. God knows we can put out the largest butterfly garden…if we put together everybody’s: V’s, his parents’, my parents’ and mine. The only real fear is of first impressions; especially when the cultural contexts are impossibly different. Knowing, though, that all the people involved are educated, civilized, etc.; the knowledge of the damage potential of one wrong statement made, even in the most innocent of intents, is what is scaring the hell out of me. These relationships are for life and it is only the least that one hopes for the best, at least to begin with.

I am getting married (deep breath). I now even know when. I mean I know precisely when – the 11^th of February 2008. But of the many dualities that mark and will continue to mark this relationship, a doubt of whether I will be ‘allowed’ to remember this date as my marriage anniversary remains; because the 11^th of Feb is only the first of our weddings – the Hindu/Bong one. A Catholic wedding (date still undecided) that will ensue the Hindu one will almost always demand to be considered for equal candidature as the anniversary.

Choosing V as my life partner was as simple as the rest of it is complicated. Bypassing the argument that simplicity or complication are both just states of the mind, I’ve often sat considering what this relationship entails…and omigosh, for the rest of my life!!!

V and I had this conversation yesterday which led me to notice that no one had asked anyone whether or not they wanted to get married. I was moving along my decided course and V just seemed to have blended in. I had marked my timelines and I wanted to get married. Tick in the first social checkbox – post graduated at 23; tick in the second social checkbox – work for a year; third in the third – marry at 24 and four- a kid (preferably a girl) at 25.

Through my acquaintance-friendship-dependence-unity with V, and my simultaneous break up with A, we never even had what can qualify to be called a courtship. What started out as a virtual acquaintance, transitioned easily into an alliance marked by interminable phone calls of confession and heart-to-hearts to quickly yet un-ostentatiously to this day when we stand engaged.

Its weird and wonderful how these decisions were made pat, in complete doubtlessness. Even as I discovered his love of creepy-crawlies and his mulish ways, the feeling of correctness pervaded. If, as I believe, God speaks through the gut (heart actually… but God and gut are alliterative), I know this is right, and bright and beautiful…just like those butterflies V’s trying to teach me to appreciate.

The Curse of Goodness

(written sometime back)

I am home now for sometime and back to doing what I do best here - talking to Ma. Hour after hour of talking - those platters of thought:made up of experiences, replete with the flavours of love, hatred, humour, joy, sorrow and such other familiars. Our tete-a-tete got us to look back at may last year as we sat over a cup of tea this morning.

The months of May-June are the foot loose months for us. That time of the year when the mountains beckon and take us backpacking from one hill station to another on a family holiday. They always made for wonderful memories...until May last year (2006).

The trips always begin with Delhi and end with it. The trip last year also ended with the capital and so did a life. R kakima (bong for aunty) committed suicide...

Our family had befriended the S's on a March eight years ago. They almost instantly won approval from all of us (Ma, Pa and I); and before long, congenial family dinners became a weekly ritual. S kaku (bong for uncle), was, of course, the biggest hit among us. But then again, he always is one with everyone. An IPS (postal) officer of a high rank, extremely humble, educated, soft-spoken, cultured - polish and finesse personified. What could stop us mere mortals from being bewitched?

His wife was of a slightly different strain - on the outside and a different tune altogether on the inside. R kakima was also educated, intelligent, cultured, and all that jazz. For some reason, she cooked chana almost each time she invited us for dinner. Besotted by her son, mildly indifferent to her daughter and quite unhappy with her husband. And yes, chronically depressed.

The son, A, could be described completely in one word - 'eccentric' and the daughter D as 'mild'.

We socialised with happy fervour with this 'nice' family during their three years in Nagpur and intermittently after their transfer to Delhi. Of our personal little triumphs during their stint in Nagpur was having slightly lightened that dark cloud of depression that always loomed large over R kakima. She seemed to have learned to smile more and needed her anti-dep pills less. S kaku constantly kept up his diplomatic stance; and we never quite understood what R aunty had against such a 'good' man as her husband.

S kaku was my ideal - the seemingly perfect son, husband, father, friend, professional and all other roles he cared to get into.

One could worship him, but not love him for he didn't love back. With all his honey words and good intentions, he kept his distance. Ever the diplomat/bureaucrat, patient and controlled; an impossibility of an entity to love, to be thought of as ones own. But we kept brushing the lovelessness under the carpet, so overwhelmed we were by his perfection; and kept pretending to not understand why R was unhappy despite her 'good' husband's 'goodnesses'.

Over the cups of tea this morning, in retrospection, a flash of insight made the truth appear as it always was - as we had never seen it. His 'goodness' had killed her.

He'd always refused to fight her. No denial could have been crueler. His lack of acknowledgment was the greatest of insults that one human could inflict on another - a human, otherwise equal on all counts. His was the cruelest way of torture- that of being so good that one couldn't take it. He was no wife-beater after all - how could she or we or anyone blame him? All the silent violence she kept turning inside - sinking deeper into the dark depths of depression while he kept collecting kudos for being the good husband with a difficult wife. No one understood her. Not until she made that final statement last summer.

As we thought about it, a wave of guilt swept over us as we realised that we were just as much partners in crime. Not only did we not understand, but we failed to acknowledge as well. We took sides with the good and forgot the humane. The curse of goodness claimed a life and a handful of consciences.

Taller than all

There are the many glories of nature and men that inspire awe; that force one to acknowledge that ‘greatness’ really is not easy to court and definitely not easy to conquer. All celebrations of the heroic in man can well be counteracted upon by still greater heroics; but it is death that takes the cake. Almost always successful in humbling men, death fails not even with the most realised of men, to humble. Whether it is wailing women with beating chests, brave tears, sympathy and solace or turning to the divine or philosophy for comfort, death surely makes itself manifest. Of all beings – good and bad, poor or rich, vain or humble, winners or losers, the big or small – death stands tall - taller than the reaches of most human vanities. For a while, it shattered mine too…today.

One of my students from MIT-SOG died today. He’d been in the hospital in coma for a while due to brain haemorrhage and passed away this morning after unsuccessfully battling for life for ten days. Death is mightier than all weaponry of all the life support systems of the world put together. Even the strong arm of Robert Svoboda (author of the book Aghora III – The Law of Karma that I’m reading now) hasn’t been of much help for my psychological leaning. I’m not as ‘objective’ as I thought I was on the way to becoming.

A young guy he was – called J K. The kind of stuff that rural backgrounds, big dreams, low self confidences and much lower than average looks are made of. Twenty five odd years and the pride of being the only barrister in his family - all gone to the dust in a matter of days.

Of my limited memories of him, one scene keeps flashing again and again before my eyes. It was one of my counselling sessions with him. Like most Marathi-medium students, he was terrified of English and I was trying to boost his confidence with English speaking. I remember I was telling him, “There are a million possible personas in an individual. Each time you find that the fumbling and nervous J is taking over, rouse the powerful J in you and kick ass.” He smiled the smile of confidence and I returned it with a smile of contentment.

I believe this one incident keeps coming back to me because it was the only real exchange of honour – much greater than words. In the following classes, I saw him internally kick his fears as he rose to face the class and speak in wrong yet brave English. There could be no greater tribute paid to a teacher. It’s time I return those tributes. These words I write for you J, as those words that you spoke for me.

I am my Roark

Looks like Ayn Rand’s novel – the Fountainhead and its protagonist, no hero, Howard Roark have really affected me in ways deeper than I fathomed. Had it not been for the novel, I would not have found the strength with which I’ve embarked on my personal Roark-like crusade – the crusade to be me. It will be just the first of my life-long fights for the preservation of identity, for being allowed to be an individual. I’m going to go out today and proudly proclaim all that I was, I am and that I will be and say that I’ve no need to hide. I’m going to refuse to stuff skeletons in my closet just because ‘others’ don’t like the sight of them. They can gossip their voices hoarse or close their eyes. I’m not going to feign shame to satiate their superegos. I am going to be my own Howard Roark in this trial and play both – the defence and the defendant. Only there is no just cause to fight for. Trivial issues need no attention; so I’ll rest my case.

Let them not like me – it isn’t necessary that everybody I meet on the face of this earth must. I’m not here to win popularity contests. At least, no; the greatest fact of all remains that I’ll sleep easy; I’ll like myself. Let those who’ve condemned themselves to hatred for me seethe inside. Let them carry their fake, yet heavy, moral thrones of judgement till they’re crushed by the weight of their very consciences someday.

I’ll forgive them and set myself free. I’ll laugh the last laugh.

Just another guy?

Something’s not quite right. Am beginning to wonder if people who claim to be unperturbed by truths really remain so. A certain relationship has started veering towards the undesirable; and by ‘undesirable’ I most certainly mean the ‘usual’. The usual beginnings of expectations and the natural consequence of disappointments are taking place. Ego tussles and proud silences are appearing on the horizon. This is the first sign of danger – the first premonitions of its mortality. What I walked along believing to be special is turning out to be yet another false start.

The eight months of growth of this relationship have been a dream; and now when the entity has taken a discernable shape, it’s time to wake up - time to feel guilty if you do not feel concern; time to feel insensitive if you state too many hurtful truths.

This is where it begins – that dreadful process of ‘normalization’. NORMAL is SCARY.
Normal is a stream of Zombies with faces and ideas unchanged for centuries. Just another relationship with just another guy – that is content for a horror story!

As I fight time and again to preserve that element of the ‘elusive’, I see it slipping away. Interacting in one way or another brings about familiarity; and needless to say, familiarity breeds contempt. But can I contemptuously keep discarding one person after another just because I’ve understood the ‘mysterious’ in them all too soon? It is selfish – and that’s alright; but it’s also unfair, and is that?

Guess not; but what is the other way about it? Is being familiar – bored – contemptuous – duty bound – false – tired the better than to cause ‘temporary’ heartbreaks? Whether it is just another guy or a very special one, letting things be, surely seems to be the more rational of choices, for time heals, whether wants to be healed or not. I must not be scared of ‘hurting’. Hurts will be healed and dissolved sooner or later. A scar is better than the permanent raw gash of a false relationship.

Think…think…