You Were Not There...

(Not-so-little something I had written on Feb 15, 2010. All junk to be kept here!)

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Yesterday it was the 14th of February, Valentine's Day. A day to celebrate love.

Love was certainly in the air, blossoming and spreading its fragrance around. The world must have appeared to be a beautiful place to the ones in love. Promises were made with hope and a silent wish alongside, to be kept till eternity.

But it was all meaningless for me because the thing that meant the most wasn't there!

When there were roses and dates,

When people had talks of their fates,

When cute cards were being given

When past follies were being forgiven

All this while what I missed the most

Were neither the hills, nor the coast.

I asked my heart for a little clue,

It skipped a beat and said it was YOU.

You had been so synonymous with this day that I had never, even in my worst nightmare, imagined this day without you. You had given Valentine's Day an altogether new meaning. However, this time you were not there.

I closed my eyes and tried bringing the past years' celebrations before me. Your innovation and spontaneity always caught me off guard! Whenever I thought this would be the limit, you always pushed the bars to higher levels, making me laugh my heart out. But no matter what, this year you were not there.

I was determined to look out for you. My heart said you must be out there somewhere… in the crowd, in the shadows, in seclusion, anywhere. On my way, I found couples cuddling, expressing their love, making the day special for their loved ones.

I went to the Sea face, where the waves were crashing down any sense of contact of lovers with the outside world.

I looked around the Beach, where with fingers intertwined, on the soft moist sand, there were promises being made of seeing each sunset together for the rest of their lives.

I reached Marine Drive where the lights playing in dark were ensuring a bright future ahead irrespective of the hardships.

I came across restaurants, where the gleaming candles at dinners were witnessing several proposals amidst the romantic tunes set by their hearts.

Seeing all this made me miss you even more. As always I expected you to come out of nowhere. You should have obviously been there, but you were not.

I missed all those whiles when I used to wait for this day to arrive, when you made it special for me, when despite your busy routine you managed getting time, when a surprise used to always be in store ahead, no matter what. Those were the days, which I wanted to re-live. I longed to see you, to hear your passion towards the day, to laugh on your antics. But no matter how much my heart craved for it, this didn't change the bottom-line for me, you were still not there.

Did you not realize your importance in my life, or is it that now there are better things for you to look out for?

Did you not think even once of the implications it would have?

Did you never realize my endless wait for you?

I guess not.

Yes, I knew the answers to all my questions, but inspite of it I crazily pressed the buttons on my TV remote in a hope of getting your glimpse somewhere, out of the blue.

My soul stirred for you to appear before me.

I kept changing channels, you ought to be somewhere! Somewhere on a news debate over Valentine's Day, somewhere teaching the Indian culture to the Generation X, somewhere helping India hit the international news with continuous words of protests, somewhere telling how India is aping the West. Somewhere, somewhere! But all efforts in vain.

I am well aware O' my Moral Police that you have Herculean tasks set upon your shoulders now.

You have paper articles to review, so as to ensure a maximum news sale.

You have fatal accusations to make upon the Government at the time of national crisis.

You have Adult Education to be imparted by forcing taxi drivers join Marathi learning schools.

You have regions and religions to be scrutinized.

You have celebrities to be shown that they aren't any more than a commoner.

You have people to be bullied.

You have so many movies to be seen and seen again to spot the sinful Bombay word.

Yes, I do understand all of it.

But I would still like to remind you of your dedication towards love which you have inherited from your worthy ancestors, and which you have been so efficiently portraying since time immemorial. It was this unconditional commitment that gave you all that you deserved; the name, the fame and the reputation.

The noble cause of shattering the gift galleries so as to make sure people don't turn materialistic and thus graciously keeping their emotions alive.

The grave responsibility of getting lovers' faces blackened to protect their identities.

The hard work involved in making them run for their lives, just so that their love was not caught in the brutal media frames.

The preparations required in making couples even marry each other so that their parents don't come and play villains!

Ah, such is the nobility of the sacred devoted soul!

The list is certainly endless.

Like so many years, yesterday, I was apprehensive about what lies next in your kitty of aforementioned innovation, but my hopes were shattered when I saw you busy in appealing to the youth of this nation to not watch some movie which deals with a silly global issue. In spreading this magnanimous message across the country, you forgot that it's THE day. People have been waiting for you since exactly one year, and that they expect a lot out of you.

I know it very well that your responsibilities towards the country are too enormous for me to even count and mention, but I would like to confess this from the depths of my heart, that no matter how much of love I see around in the city...my Valentine's Day would never be the same without you, your demonstrations, your words and your such concern towards humanity and Indian traditions!

With utmost love, sincerity and a positive hope of having a compensated blast the next V-Day!

Saimah.

Book Review: Fury (Salman Rushdie)

Another Salman Rushdie creation, Fury, explores the inner demons - demons of an individual, demons of the society, demons in the city and the demons of humanity. The manifestations of ‘furies’ building within might be as simple as anger and addiction, to as complex as molestations and murders. Rushdie claims that these furies are the driving force which may torment some people and inspire others; but whichever be the form, their presence is undeniable, unarguable and universal.

“Life is fury, he'd thought. Fury — sexual, Oedipal, political, magical, brutal — drives us to our finest heights and coarsest depths. Out of furia comes creation, inspiration, originality, passion, but also violence, pain, pure unafraid destruction, the giving and receiving of blows from which we never recover. The Furies pursue us; Shiva dances his furious dance to create and also to destroy. But never mind about gods! ... This is what we are, what we civilize ourselves to disguise — the terrifying human animal in us, the exalted, transcendent, self-destructive, untrammeled lord of creation.”

Enveloped in this diverse range of furies, the most prominent being existential fury, is the novel’s protagonist Professor Malik Solanka. A man in his mid fifties, an academician of Indian descent living with his wife and a four year old son in London, eventually becomes the creator of ‘Little Brain’- a very popular mechanical doll that can philosophize. However, the pressures of fame become too hot to handle and he ends up moving to New York City, leaving behind his wife and four year old son without giving them any explanation.

Noone knew, but him, that one night he had found himself standing near his sleeping wife and son with a knife in his hands. He was unable to comprehend the rage and fire developing within and had then decided that it’s best for his loved ones to be as far from him as possible. He plans on fighting his inner demons someplace where atleast he can’t harm his family. Once he moves to New York, he gets entangled in the fury of the city and of the people there, clashing with his own turbulence.

Meanwhile, New York is under the grip of a Disney-obsessed serial killer whose victims comprise of rich, young and beautiful girls of the city; raped and scalped brutally. An alcoholic, disoriented Solanka wonders and fears if these murders are a result of the same rage that made him stand that night with a knife. To deal with this blame and wreckage, Solanka befriends a computer pro, entrepreneur and an incest victim, Mila, who claims to renovate people (mostly through blowjobs, though!).

Once with Solanka, Mila creates a new version of the Little Brain doll, which becomes a huge success. However Mila is soon dropped for a smart, politically aware, Indian beauty, Neela Mahendra who is a traffic stopper (literally), head turner, responsible for people walking into trees, dogs forgetting to pee and so on. Neela falls in love with Solanka and after much twists and turns eventually saves his life, risking her own. In the end, Solanka is seen watching his son play, wondering if his inner demons have been exorcised and if he can be reunited with his family.

As much as I tried, I could not ignore the autobiographical similarities in the narration and description of characters. Solanka giving up his post in Cambridge due to the ‘narrowness’ of academia is pretty similar to Rushdie’s reasons for leaving London. Solanka’s creation ‘Little Brain’ that could quote philosophy is on the lines of Rushdie’s creation - his books. The one ‘blasphemous’ work of Little Brain - which he then calls satanic doll - puts Solanka in great trouble, thus coinciding with Rushdie’s much controversial The Satanic Verses. Even the beautiful Neela falling in love with Solanka, a man twice her age, reminds the readers of Rushdie’s love interest Padma Lakshmi.

What I found missing in the book was that the description remains monotonously one-dimensional throughout and mostly devoid of emotion that couldn’t allow the readers to form a connection with the characters even till the end. I’m not too sure whether it is intentional or not, but until I have the likeability (or dislikeability) factor going, I wouldn’t care what the characters end up doing.

To me, I realized, Salman Rushdie has become so synonymous with magic realism that now when he narrates a contemporary tale, I find it tad annoying. What I loved about Rushdie’s previous works was the simple fact that the portrayals of events and people in his books are ordinary, yet creating an extraordinary satirical impact. It is done in such a way that the boundaries between reality and fantasy, tragedy and comedy, causes and consequences, become absolutely blurred. However, in Fury I could find none of this. Being master at manipulating words, many passages in the book were brilliant but that final zing, I felt, was just not there!