24hrs. Later and Still Spellbound

Because I still haven't been able to compose myself for long enough to be able to compose something on Sonu Nigam's concert last night, Vikram Seth's beautiful alfaaz (words) will have to suffice:

"Music, such music, is a sufficient gift. Why ask for happiness; why hope not to grieve? It is enough, it is to be blessed enough, to live from day to day and to hear such music - not too much, or the soul could not sustain it - from time to time."

In Vino...Something

Veritas. I know.

For someone as obsessed with thinking as I am, drinking a glass of red wine (on a relatively empty stomach) and listening to rock ballad after rock ballad when you're supposed to be going to bed (so you can wake up and run a few miles before having to get ready for work) isn't the best of ideas. Counter-intuitively (most would say that red wine isn't conducive to thought), the combination of vino and voce lead not to heavy eyelids and the onset of slumber, but to a scrambling and scrambled brain - one that would could and does stay up and think until at least daybreak.



(Edit: 19 April 2012. Found this in the 'Drafts' section. No idea when I wrote it - but it's interesting, nonetheless)

And We're Back (to writing well)

I just finished writing something that I actually like. It's witty, it's to-the-point, it uses fabulous words like 'adroitness,' and - above all - it has those little changes in tone and temperament and volume that I so love.

And we're back. Just in time for the new year.

Hallelujah.

Saying Goodbye to Shalimar, Again

My relationship with many of my closest friends is characterized by this uncanny ability we have to force ourselves to say 'goodbye' to each other multiple times a year. What this means is that we end up never knowing when we'll see each other next. In the off-chance that we end up in the same city, we rejoice at the prospects of shooting the proverbial breeze (I don't think I'd be able to do any real 'shooting' - unless it involves cameras of any sort), sharing a few meals, and saying 'goodbye' again.

Shalimar, you may remember him from this post, and I have known each other since 2006. In the five years that we've been friends, we've probably done this hello/goodbye thing at least 5 times - and all in the two and a half years since I graduated from college. I'd say we've been pretty lucky (or, at least I have been - I can't put words in Shalimar's mouth) that we've managed to be in the same city (New York, Seattle, Toronto, etc.) at the same time, a number of times. But at the same time, it's nothing like those years in college where we'd see each other (at least in class) for a couple hours a week - that is, if Shalimar showed up (sorry!).

Shalimar's been in town for the past two weeks. Having not seen each other since his extremely short trip to New York last year, and having not talked in person for more than 15minutes since that odd afternoon I spent at Vancouver's airport (after 30 hours+ of travelling, and ridiculously ill from the stomach problems I had contracted in India), it was nice to chat, and to lose horribly to him and my sister at N64 Mario Kart.

Shalimar left today. He's on his way back to the Motherland. Before he left, though, he came to say goodbye. He has this uncanny knack of saying things that make sense (and are also often things I don't necessarily want to hear). As he was leaving, he looked at me and said - yaar, apne aap mein thori si jaan daalo - smiled, turned around and got back into the car.

The statement irked me. But it's so true. I'm not sure where that jaan's gone. It's kind-of like that book. The one in which the little, happy boy loses his smile one day and, try-as-hard-as-he-can, can't and doesn't find it until he's ready to do so. 

The point of that story is, however, that the boy keeps looking for it. His family and friends Notice that he's lost his smile, and help him look for it. Lucky boy.

Of Beer, Muslimness, and Dialogue

I miss New York – that’s obvious – but one thing I miss above all else is the constant dialogue with interesting and knowledgeable people. I still reminisce about that first evening at 1020 (or was it 1080?) – the predominantly-undergrad bar on Amsterdam that my batch-mates and I used to frequent until we discovered the seedier (and thus more fascinating) Lion’s Head across the street. I remember sitting in one of those grungy booths at 1020, still on that high of having made it to Columbia and New York, and utterly confused by that week’s Theory and Methods course readings. I think we were reading Gadamer that week. Or was it Heidegger? Regardless, we sat at 1020 with our Brooklyn Lagers and Stella Artois and discussed theory. I still remember Ms. A (the only PhD candidate in the group) explaining a particularly difficult aspect of the theory through beer-related analogies.

I think the hardest part of moving back to Vancouver has been losing that intellectual part of my social life. Don’t get me wrong, my friends here are smart people – but we’re not in school together, and our relationships aren’t based on that commonality. When we go out we talk about everything under the sun, but that mental stimulation is just not the same. That being said, I’ve started to discover some fascinating minds, and am excited to tap into them over the coming months.

Dinner this evening was an interesting affair. There were five of us and somehow we got onto the topic of Indian politics. I can’t remember how exactly the conversation shifted into that realm; I think it had something to do with Minister Kenney’s recent remarks on the burqa, as well as my own tendency to veer towards issues of Indian politics. At one point, communal violence (particularly Gujarat 2002) came up – and one of my dinner companions (a South Indian born in Africa) started making fun of the riots and its outcomes. His manner of dealing with the issue evoked in me a reaction that I had not expected. I’m usually an unflinchably calm person, but the emotions that came out at that point were almost visceral in nature. I was, to be quite honest, taken aback by how much I was affected by the dialogue occurring around me. Seeing that I was obviously perturbed by the situation unfolding around me, the wonderful Ms. M stepped in and forced the conversation away from its ridiculous path. She made it clear that we were teetering on the edge of that spiral into discordance and asked those around the table to take into account that there was a Gujarati Muslim (me) – one who had studied the conflict so intently and intensely that she had once broken down in the library at Columbia because of her inability to deal with the literature any longer – present.

By this point, I had become so shaken-up by the conversation (and again, I must stress that this isn’t a usual occurrence!) that I started shovelling onions in my mouth (from my Greek salad – I had initially left them uneaten because of my dislike of raw onions) to keep me from bursting out in anger and frustration. Two of the people at the table hadn’t even heard of the Gujarat riots (facepalm) and asked me to explain them. Now, generally and having written at least 100 pages worth of papers on the topic during grad school, I would’ve been able to do so. I finished eating the onions, and began to explain the issues at hand – all the while staring at my plate, refusing to look up. For some reason, the words didn’t – no, couldn’t – emerge from my mouth. I was incoherent, couldn’t string sentences together, and had no idea where to start. About a minute into it, I gave up, gave Ms. M a pleading look that begged her to take over, and picked at the crumbs left on my plate. What she said, I don’t remember.

Having now studied Gujarat 2002 and Hindu nationalism in general for at least 5 years, my reaction to today’s conversation took me by surprise. I’ve been thinking about it for the past few hours but am still confused as to why my reaction was what it was. The only credible and possible answer that I can come up with involves two things: my deep knowledge of the issue (and thus of the complexities and problems inherent in it) and, perhaps more importantly, the effect of my summer 2010 India trip.

Growing up in Canada, I had never been made aware of my Muslimness. My name isn’t a common Muslim name; and so, apart from those who knew others with my name and knew their religion, I was never identified as a Muslim. Oftentimes, people weren’t sure of my religion. Most of the time, it was ethnicity that mattered more. But when I went to India, I was immediately identified as ‘Muslim.’ Maybe it’s the way I look. Maybe it was the clothes I wore, the Urduized language I spoke (although, I must say that I probably still know Hindi better than Urdu because of my Sanskrit training). My name, though, definitely indicated my Muslimness in India, and everyone I met picked up on it immediately. Having never dealt with ‘being Muslim’ – even in a post-9/11 age – I was definitely put on the defensive, dealt with a lot of criticism for veering off the Sirat al-Mustaqeem at one point (still haven’t read the Qur’an in full), and felt as if I was expected to behave in a certain way and conform to certain principles of Muslimness.
What’s weird though is that, while the Muslim identity was foisted onto me, I never – at least I don’t think I did – appropriated it for myself. Of course I used it to my advantage when I was in Muslim-majority areas, or when I needed to ingratiate myself with the guy looking after my shoes at Nizamuddin, but that was about it. I hated being identified as Muslim – because it had never mattered to me, and it was not a fundamental part of my identity. But when I returned to New York, and started reading all of this riot nonsense, it affected me much more than it had in the past. I’m not sure whether my heightened awareness of ‘my Muslimness’ had anything to do with it, or whether it was my constantly-fluctuating emotions (long story – we won’t even go there), or even whether it was just a result of my being more aware of the horrors of religious riots. Regardless, I sat in the library and cried, ended-up writing about the late 19th and early 20th centuries for my M.A thesis, and decided that I would not go into academia.

So where does that leave us now? I have no idea. I love studying Indian politics. I have so many fabulous memories and experiences that I will always cherish (yes, I’m a nerd). But, I don’t know if I can do this for much longer. That’s definitely one of the most important reasons for my attempt to veer into the legal/business/trade world. While the latter may pose many moral and ethical questions, at least I won’t be dealing with memories of trauma and fear, and with my new-found inability to deal with issues of hatred.

Le Succès d'Iff

As a self-professed logophile, my inability to write anything longer than a tweet these days has put me in the deepest of doldrums (and has obviously also kindled an affinity for the dramatic). During my grad-school days, writing 20 pages of decent prose in a night seemed almost automatic. The phrasing, the words, all seemed to flow effortlessly, sprouting out of my fingers without much thought. These days, it's as if Iff has turned off the writing stream. Haroun, unfortunately, is nowhere in sight.

It may be that the waters are muddled, or that the effluents of the hundreds of streams that have sprouted up in the past six months have intermingled to such an extent that recognizing each has become impossible. Perhaps, like my kitchen's drain, my brain - and its repository of words - may just be clogged.

Whatever the case, the long and short of it is that I haven't written since finishing up my M.A thesis - and it doesn't feel right. It's not as if my life is incomplete without writing - the effect is much more unnerving than that. It's as if something's amiss, off-kilter, unbalanced. It's as if I've been robbed of the ability to express myself, to exercise my brain and, most importantly, to compose those word-concertos that I so loved hearing in my head.

That flow, that ravaani, the crescendos and decrescendos, those sudden changes in key. Ahhh. It's as if I've forgotten how to compose.


I hated it when I couldn't do it on the violin.

And I don't like it now.

I Almost Forgot...

Five years of RFS and counting. Boo-yeah.

Also, in a previous post I'd said that Bartender Steve knew his tequila because the one we'd had was so smooth we didn't need the lime.

Turns out - I Don't need the lime anymore.

It's all New York's 'fault.'