Indian Writing

For the novel Brick Lane, Ali didn’t need to spend any time at all in the real Brick Lane. Movies are different; permission is now being sought to film the cinematic Brick Lane in the real Brick Lane. The community has the moral right to keep the film-makers out but they cannot then complain if somewhere else is used and presented to the world as Brick Lane…

And why don’t more people just read books instead of wanting to burn them?

A five-year old boy falls down a 60-foot shaft and is trapped for 50 hours while rescue efforts are on. But could it be true that bookmakers were offering odds on the child’s fate?

According to betting syndicates, interest in Prince’s rescue operation began on the penultimate day. By the time he emerged on Sunday evening, the volumes had already crossed a whopping Rs 150 crore. For every Re 1, the rate of return on the boy’s survival started at 45 paisa and went down when TV channels started reporting that he was about to be fished out.

Whether it’s true or not that some punters placed bets on the kid’s survival, I don’t think the reports needed to stereotype an entire state/community.

If you ‘question’, you don’t understand.
If you ‘understand’, you’ve been co-opted.

If you ‘talk’, you’re sanctimonious.
If you ‘don’t talk’, you’re frivolous.

If you’re ‘in the field’, you’re too involved.
If you’re not ‘in the field’, you have no business talking about it.

If you ‘ask why’, you’re stupid.
If you ask ‘why not’, you’re very stupid.

If you ‘qualify’, you’re equivocating.
If you ‘don’t qualify’, you’re making sweeping generalisations.

If you ‘care’, you’re sentimentalising.
If you ‘don’t care’, you’re heartless and cruel.

If you ‘critique’, you need to cut them some slack.
If you don’t ‘critique’, you’re cutting them too much slack.

If you ‘believe’, you’re naive.
If you ‘don’t believe’, you’re cynical.

If you ‘do’, you’re damned.
If you ‘don’t', then you’re damned, too.

Every word shifts, slips, has many meanings.

Every word holds a gun to your head and asks: “Who are you? Declare yourself forthwith.”

I want a life without quotation marks.

*****

(posted in July last year)

I accompanied my mother, who is a cancer survivor, to the hospital today. Like many cancer patients and survivors, she has a port implanted in her chest - a surgically implanted venous access device (VAD) that provides long-term access to a major vein, which helps for infusion chemotherapy and blood transfusions. The thing about a port is that it has to be checked for maintenance every 30 days. Takes only a few minutes, but it has to be done to prevent the cath from becoming occluded.

So, today was my mother’s appointment. We went to the hospital. As my mother’s port was being handled, a family arrived: father, mother, grandmother, and a small child who must have been five or six years old. The child was the patient. (Quite often, the entire family accompanies the cancer patient to the hospital. It helps all of them cope, makes them feel that they are doing something.) They had brought the child for her port maintenance. Except that they had been given an appointment for last Wednesday. They were coming several days later.

“Why didn’t you come earlier,” scolded the nurse in charge. “Haven’t I told you how dangerous it is to delay the port maintenance?”

The family looked distressed. “We’re coming from Ulhasnagar. Our house was flooded. Everything was flooded… Kaise aate madam?” said the father apologetically, with the women chiming in, murmuring softly, looking anxiously at the nurse - almost as if they were begging her to reassure them that it was still all right.

They were both right.

The child waited patiently, looking only a little bewildered.

I wonder how many lives have been affected, and in how many hard ways, by last week’s downpour.

*****

(I had posted this after last year’s rains on 26 July)