OF SMOKING LOUNGES, BARCELONA AND THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE

The Frankfurt Airport like many other airports around the world, I presume, has what I would call, smoking lounges. Actually they look like small glass cubby-holes where smokers go in to smoke (what else, you dirty minds?). After making that nine-hour journey from Kolkata, awake throughout the night watching three films—one after the other--and listening to two howling babies and later, I presume, their howling parents, we badly needed to, well, have a smoke each. So, in we went in one of the cubbies. We had our silk cuts all right but no lighter. This was offered to us by a woman who also sweetly offered us the information that she was from Spain. Don’t ask me how but till that point it wasn’t really difficult to figure out what she was saying. I said that we were from India and it was kind of funny, because, as we smoked, we struck up a conversation, although a brief one, without understanding each other’s language. I told her that I had watched ‘Vicky Cristina Barcelona’ on the flight and catching the name Barcelona she seemed pleased, indicating to us in gestures and in Espaniol that(perhaps)she lived a little distance away from Barcelona. We thanked her for the lighter. She too kept saying, ‘muchas gracias’, for heaven knows what reason and then we parted ways. The whole incident was kind of ‘feel-good’. It warmed the cockles of my heart to think that two perfect strangers could oddly communicate with each other, each without comprehending the other, in a country not their own, and yet feel part of the same flowing sea of humanity.

As I recalled the episode later, I was struck by the grip that the politics of language has over us. What if I had met this lady in a wholly different set of circumstances? What if I had met her to tell her, without being understood, that I was in trouble and needed help? What if she had only managed to figure out that I was in trouble and not what my trouble exactly was? And this scenario can actually play itself out any day, perfectly within the limits of probability, between two people who do not speak each other’s language. Think of the Tamil version of the film ‘Roja’. An illiterate village girl from Tamil Nadu is searching desperately for her husband in Kashmir and speaking to an Army Officer who fails to understand her plea, let alone its intensity, just because she speaks Tamil. In fact, this aspect of the politics of language is absolutely lost in the Hindi version of the film. It was a crime to dub the film in Hindi.

When people back home ask me if I am facing too much of a problem in Poland because I do not know Polish, I tell them that I feel exactly the same problem here as I would face in any other non-Bangla speaking state in my country. They don’t seem convinced but it really is quite true. I am as safe or as insecure in Poland as I would be, say, in Nagaland!

SOME VOYAGE!

I have not posted in a long time. It’s because such a lot has happened and kept me occupied that I really couldn’t make the time. Let me update my tiny blog readership on what has happened since I tendered my resignation. I worked for a month more—till February 6, to be precise, within which I went pretty crazy completing pending work and executing the new tasks I was given. But there was such a sense of relief that this was the last time in a long, long time that I was doing all this, that I did not feel half as maniacal as I have felt in the past. Work was balanced(??!!) with numerous social visits and shopping sprees for the simple reason that I would be leaving India soon for a couple of years. My closest colleagues and seniors turned up with lovely mementos which I managed to pack in my 20-kilo treasure-trove. Goodbyes were said even as I felt nervous to think that I was off to a land where practically no one speaks the languages I know to communicate in. And my heart bled. For the first time in my life it bled for the parents who had long ago let their daughter go her way, who in a very physical way this time would be left behind. There is no greater pull than that of the umbilical chord. I wept, bawled even, like a baby being taken away from its cradle.

My visas have always created some problem or the other in the past and I have to mention this—I have no criminal record—and yet, this time was no exception. Darby’s visa had a rubber stamp of the New Delhi Polish Consulate and a sweeping glance over my visa just two days prior to our flight revealed an oversight. My visa had no stamp on it. Frantic calls to our travel agent ensued with Darby finally agreeing to accompany me to the Consulate in Kolkata. Another round of frantic phone calls to Delhi from there, until we were summarily told by the stern visa officer at Delhi that stamps were not mandatory and the Polish Embassy had only recently started putting stamps on visas. We would face no hurdle en route to our destination. Were we relieved? In a way, yes. In a sense , no. Images of gigantic, cruel SS Germans in holocaust movies flashed across our minds as we wondered how my fate and that of my visa’s depended on officials at the Frankfurt Airport. Would they waive or would they not? That was the question.

Let me also fill you in on the fact that on the day of our departure we packed and unpacked thrice, constantly trying to imagine how much was exactly 28 kilos (20+8 per passenger). Finally, we dragged our luggage down the stairs (what with a timely power cut), got everything weighed, lugged them up the staircase ( for 6 storeys), rearranged some of the stuff and left the rest to God.

An appropriate English translation of ‘ buk dhip dhip’ escapes me at the moment but this feeling, rather pregnant with its Bengali connotation, was our constant companion till Frankfurt. But, ‘bangals’ as we are, we are the last to admit a lack of courage. Here’s what happened at the Frankfurt Airport. We had to be cleared by the ‘Passport Control’ official. Now, that official in our case (non EU passengers) happened to be a plump, jolly, moustached German policeman who only spoke German to our chaste English. Oh oh! Here stepped in a much younger English speaking official who after checking Darby’s papers translated for the policeman that Darby was a Visiting Professor at the University of Lodz, Poland. ‘Ah, Professora!’—and with that one decisive expression and a faint smile on the face, he cleared Darby’s passage. Now, what happens to the 5-feet-1, puny ‘Bongonari’? She tries not to be flirtatious ( ha! As if being coquettish would have helped), nevertheless, bats her eyelids and meekly says that she was merely accompanying her husband to fulfil wifely duties. Pativrata Bharatiya Nari, Jaago! One look at the denim clad ‘Bongonari’ and bingo!—work done. I was cleared as well. Was it my vanity or my overactive imagination but I seemed to hear the English speaking ‘firang’ mutter—‘sweeth, sweeth’. In three hours I would be flying to Warsaw.

Here, I should not forget to mention the endless walking—up and down, to and fro—at the airport to gate no. A30, lugging our oversized, heavy handbags, laptop, camera, books, mufflers, caps and gloves and bazooka (just kidding), some of it obviously tucked inside our heavy overcoats worn over three layers of clothes. It did not help really that we looked and felt exactly like two midgets beside all the six- and-a-half-footers who carried way less stuff on their broad ‘firang’ shoulders. And how their luggage handles seemed to rest on them as lightly as a bird’s practised claws clasping a perch. Did we not see faint smirks lurking behind pink, white and ruddy faces—amused at our despicable plight? Shoo—rhetorical question! ‘Amar ei dehokhani tule dhoro’ (surely your mother-tongue comes back to you time and again in 'phoren' lands) –we were on the point of collapse after nine hours of captivity on board. And all the response I get from K when I scrap her reporting this is a mere—‘aha re!’ Oh, the massive injustice of it all! Is there no Bong left in the world willing to sympathize with two fellow pint-sized Bongs unaccustomed to strenuous physical labour? Oh, the unfairness of it all!

On two particularly frustrating occasions, during our connecting flight to Warsaw, I felt like telling Darby—‘Honey, I’ve shrunk the baggage’. Instead, all that we managed to do was to be totally embarrassing and disgustingly undecided as to how best to take it all down the aisle without making people wait for long behind us. Finally, when we managed to take our seats, I was too tired to even feel like disappearing altogether. I felt very sorry for the pretty Polish girl sitting beside Darby who was busy trying to keep his overcoat to himself and I must confess sheepishly that I also felt sorry for the gentleman who patiently waited for me to go ‘heave ho’ and pick up my bag and throw it over his really long legs to the other side. Finally, ‘uncle-long-legs’ got up himself and pushed my bag gently down the aisle. Oh boy! I was so shrunk by then. The worst part of it was when I imagined what my erstwhile colleagues would have said had they seen me then? My graceful ‘Bongonari’ moves all washed down an aisle??!!—‘mori eki tor dustorolajja’! (there goes Rabi Thakur in my head again)

The one and a half hour afternoon flight was okay. I faintly remember hearing myself snoring away (another unlike-a-lady performance) until refreshments came and before we knew, we were at freezing, snow white Warsaw, collecting even more luggage and being welcomed by Asia (Joanna) who would leave us at the Warsaw station to catch a train to Lodz.

Other ‘Darby’ean mishaps, fortunately averted:

1) Darby forgets to take his laptop bag, also containing his documents—a la passport—and leaves it outside the immigration counter at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport. Would have been an instant loss of Rs. 40,000 plus years of education sweat, toil, hair and sanity. Averted by a timely reminder from Darby’s mom.

2) Darby forgets to take his overcoat, which just could not be worn in Kolkata, before queuing up for the boarding passes and baggage checking. Would have been an instant loss of Rs. 6000. Averted by a miraculous reminder from a lightbulb inside Darby’s ‘postfoundational’ brain.

3) Darby forgets where he has kept his appointment letter when asked for it at the Passport Control Section at Frankfurt. Ignores Joan’s expert advice and instead rummages through practically his entire hand baggage, causing pieces of clothing to fly out of it with alarming rapidity, much to the amusement of ‘Ah, Professora!’-policeman and the embarrassment of a sheepishly grinning Joan. Would have been a loss of face and sanity. Averted finally by the miraculous discovery of the document exactly where it was always supposed to be.

Lesson learnt: postfoundational, Derridean anything can befuddle a man. Period.

THE CAT IS OUT OF THE BAG!

I began the previous post by stating that a lot has been happening in my life. I’d like to elaborate. On the 5th of January this year I tendered my resignation, something that I’d been attempting to do, an idea that I had been toying with for more than a year now. And it has been such a liberating experience. I cannot even begin to describe the rush that I felt when I wrote it. I was on my way to freedom. I got the job when I was desperately seeking one four years back. I wanted to do something tame after having done quite a few wild things. I had been going through a particularly bad patch personally and I needed the reassurance of a secure job in the city I call home, which would allow me to come back to my family every evening. And for two years after I landed the job I kept on thinking that I was really one lucky bulb that I had got the job so effortlessly. I was arrogant at the interview but I was honest…and there I was, a job in hand (worth two in the bush—people said) after months of feeling unsettled in more than one sense. It took stupid me two long years to figure out that the sole reason I got the job so effortlessly was because I was too, just too damn smart for it. One of life’s little ironies, I suppose.
‘So… what went wrong?’, I asked myself and I realized how stereotyping almost undid me in a place that, pardon me, teems with stereotypes. My going to work in an educational institution attired and made up in exactly the way young professionals go to work worldwide, has over four years earned me quite an interesting bunch of responses. On my face it has always been, ‘You are looking great!’. In my absence, it has always been, ‘How does she find the time in the morning to come to work so prim and proper? How does she get so much time to paint her nails? Who is she showing off to?... A bunch of teenagers?’ (the last bit has been mouthed by the pettiest specimens of humankind I have ever met). How did I ever come to know all this? You will be surprised. How often these words have been uttered in my presence in just the right decibel so as not to arouse suspicion of deliberate bitching in my presence and yet be heard and hurtful. In a place which has no dearth of ‘lipsticked’ middle-aged women pouring over silk sarees on sale and ‘Oriflame’ brochures in between periods, I just never got their point. And, so, at various points I have been deemed frivolous, too self-conscious to be taken seriously by my students and as someone whose opinions and views on her subject of study doesn’t matter because she happens to be young and ‘attractive’ and not old, smug, illogical, narrow minded, all-knowing, Ekta Kapoor serial-loving women. Oh, how I am spewing venom! Do you see what they have done to me? I just had to run for my life, my sanity, my better sense. Let me make two points very clear. I have no illusions about the way I look. I do not consider myself attractive at all although I do not suffer from a low sense of self either. I, thus, never got to understand what in me evoked such subterranean censure and apathy. Was it my age that was all wrong? Or was it my manicured fingers? Incidentally there are young colleagues at my workplace who, for very similar and apparently unfathomable reasons, have aroused similar reactions in people. All I can feel for them is empathy. But then one has to realise that most workplaces offer a similar scenario. And I have kind of figured out why. It is the fear of being upstaged. It is the insecurity that gnaws at a person the moment he or she encounters a younger or brighter (or both) soul inching their way into a bastion that was till now well fortified against unwelcome intrusions. And thus, the best defence is to go about offending. Erode someone’s self-esteem…basically, bitch about them so much, and ensure that it gets heard or reported, so that you can shred the person to thin strips and hang them all around for a further round of backbiting because the strips are too thin anyways. Having said all that I have so far,let me once again make my stand very clear. Not everyone I have met and worked with in my workplace deserve the kind of lashing out that I have indulged in so far. My own department, for example, was the most awesome...co-operative, helpful, almost like a breath of fresh air in an otherwise (according to me) fetid cesspool.
However, after being overworked and thoroughly underutilised for four years I want to do my-kind-of-things again. I want to discover 'me' all over again. A two-year sabbatical with nothing much to do but travel really cheap is too wildly unimaginable, foolish, unambitious and downmarket for all the women I have worked with who have sent their sons and daughters or who aspire to send them to work for foreign multinational companies. I have nothing against this breed. In fact I am happy for their success albeit achieved conventionally. I have lovely cousins and friends who are happy doing the same. I just don’t understand why the existence of other kinds of people making ‘other’ choices make this new breed and their mothers so goddamn highbrow. Or maybe I do understand. Those who love living life out of the box generally find favour with only a handful. And so I have decided to move on, find ‘my’ ground beneath ‘my’ feet once again, find freedom from the compulsive urge to prove that ‘hey, I am good at what I do’, find time to be able to do just nothing and not feel guilty, find friends in foreign lands, treasure the few who understand my crooked crooked ways, and find wisdom from the lessons I’ve learnt in life so far… because you know what? ‘Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.’

BONJOUR 2009!

Too much has been happening in my life lately and it’s all been such a rush!...of long-pondered-over decisions and uncontrollable deluge of emotions. First, let me fill you in on my year-end. Christmas was fun at S.D.’s—good food, good liquor, stimulating conversations…no, I take that back…for once mindless conversations(!) and great company. Met Kajari on the 26th. Felt pretty mushy considering the fact that I might not meet her again for the next few years. Came to know the insider’s story of IFS training. We have been sworn to secrecy. She got me a lovely dupatta from Mussorie. Plan to take it to Lodz. Am sure it will be quite a hit there among the Poles. On the 29th attended A.D.’s wedding reception. Met some real characters after a pretty long time. Was wearing a kanjeevaram after three years. Thought that was pretty momentous. 31st was spent at home watching the Henry Fonda-Audrey Hepburn starrer ‘War and Peace’. Good in parts. But it really is too much of old Hollywood in its pace to demand a repeat watch from me anytime soon. I’d prefer David Lean any day. The first day of 2009 was laidback. Got back to some pending work and devoted the evening to ‘The English Patient’. I had not seen the movie before. I was a bit disappointed by the fact that the Kip-story is not fully developed in the movie. But predictably the Katherine-Count Laszlo passion play takes up most of the screen-time. But what passion play! Ralph Fiennes makes me change my mind about British male sexuality. He was a scorcher what with his intense and dazed gaze. It seems that the more reprehensible his on screen characters are, the more he excels as them as an actor. Remember ‘Schindler’s List’ and his portrayal of the abominable Amon? And then the haunting background score and the theme song—the Hungarian folksong ‘Szerelem Szerelem’ sung by Marta Sebestyen. Sounds Arabic and funnily enough Katherine in the movie thinks it is Arabic too when she hears it. Just had to download the song. I let the movie completely take over me for a couple of days. And then fulfilled a fourteen-year long dream. Watched Massimo Troisi’s swansong—‘ Il Postino’. I think the fact that Massimo passed away twelve hours after the cameras stopped rolling for the film added to the mythification of this movie for me. It has been worth the wait and much much more. I have never ever seen a movie so lyrical and that is not only because of Neruda’s poetry and the scenic beauty of the Italian countryside but because of the lilt of its cinematic language, the portrayal of the humdrum life of the fisherfolk in a poverty-ridden yet idyllic Italian fishing village, the amazingly heart-wrenching melody of Luis Enriquez Bacalov’s music and most importantly one actor’s out-of-the-world performance as a simpleton in love with poetry and life—Massimo Troisi as the unforgettable Mario Ruoppolo. The sea has never looked so blue, rose-hued walls of a villa have never looked more Mediterranean and Dante’s Beatrice has never seemed as desirable as they all have in this poetry in motion. If the movie has not left a lump in the throat and a smile on the lips of anyone who has watched it, boy, he ain’t human! And I rediscovered something else as well. Poetry is the weapon of a lover. You can win the world and your girl with poetry. Maybe that’s the Bengali in me speaking. My Class XI students took me quite seriously when I said this the other day, albeit quite amused that I was talking to them about love! Raising a toast to two of 2009’s great finds, I’ll stop for now.

AD-LIB

Came across this poem in a novel by Alan Titchmarsh and I simply cannot resist quoting this in my post. I will not be cremated but I do want loved ones to remember these lines while remembering me at my funeral. Here goes…
‘Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there. I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow.
I am the diamond glints on snow.
I am the sunlight on ripened grain.
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning’s hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry:
I am not there. I did not die.’

HOW THE AUTHORS OF 'OPAL MEHTA'-S GET FAMOUS, GET INFAMOUS AND GET OSTRACISED FOR LIFE

Wining and dining at S.D.’s was the fun stuff that it always is—a lot of good food with alchohol and conversation, both of which just ceased to flow. Darby and I met A.di for the first time and I have to say this. I have never seen anyone wear such a crisp white shirt before. I would even a few days ago take pride in mine but I abdicate the throne. Moving away from such frivolous sartorial details, let me type my impression of A.di, someone I’d love to be in touch with. She is one vocal, feisty and fun woman. She is an ex-colleague of S.D.’s and we had already heard so many good things about her. S.D. had told us in detail the effort and vigour that A.di would put in everything she did at the hell-hole of a university they both taught in. But she just ‘had to’ leave the place the moment she had the opportunity for it seems she couldn’t have survived there. And I don’t blame her. One might ask “why not stay there and fight the system?” but the survivors there who make any sense confess that with the ‘crab mentality’ abounding there, no decent or honest work gets done. And that has been the case for over 15 years. A.di now stays in New Zealand with her husband and son. She has successfully completed a creative writing course, one of the best in that country and plans to devote herself to full-time writing. She seems to be indebted to her former workplace for two reasons—1)one because it has taught her that good people are the same all over the world and bad people are the same all over the world, too, and 2) had it not been for her terrifying work experience there, she wouldn’t have discovered the writer in her. Incidentally, it has left such an indelible impression on her creative mind that her dissertation is an impish campus novel. She is currently working on getting her work published in India and I hope she tastes success.

Our free flowing discussion that day covered as diverse topics as the current absurd questioning by Heathrow Airport officials of Indians they presumably think might tell them something about the Mumbai terror attacks(guffaw!), the increasingly democratic tendency seen in the selection of Rhodes Scholars in the recent years, a Jewish friend of A.D.’s who is a devout believer and a homosexual simultaneously, how he tries reconciling these contraries in his life, and plagiarism. I learned a couple of things. Supposedly, Indians and Koreans are the most notorious when it comes to plagiarising. I am not surprised that Indians make it somewhere to the top of that list because poor us! We do not even understand the concept of plagisrising and how serious its implications can be, precisely because a majority of us go through the entire grind of education in our country (even higher education) through the tried and tested method of ‘rote and mug’. Koreans, I was informed, apparently take the cake. Whereas tutorials in India often ensure that the same material is produced by all their beneficiaries in examinations, where even university professors are guilty of writing lectures where they ‘harmlessly’ lift from other sources, in Korea, the best essay adjudged by a teacher in a language class is copied by all the students as per the instructions of the teacher!!! This, my friends, is the norm there. I don’t know which is worse. And then we talk about brain drain and how the best are leaving India for greener pastures. Have we ever pondered over the fact that may be not all, but so many leave their own homeland because their efforts are wasted in the by lanes of redtapism and because their best work goes unappreciated in their own land? People are too busy celebrating mediocrity and accepting lack of originality time and again in almost all spheres of life to bother about the ones we lose to foreign shores.Brain drain is happening every day all around us in our country—in our homes, in seats of learning, at workplaces, in election booths. And I call it brain drain because I find all around me a culture that ingrains in its followers a tendency not to question, a perverse desire to nip doubts in their buds without letting them grow, without quashing them with reason and convincing logic. I feel responsible as a teacher to ask my students to think, to analyse, to question and not accept anything or anyone at face value. And if I have failed in fulfilling this moral duty, I have failed to do my job.
P.S. I must make one point clear about this post. I do not think at all that Kaavya Vishwanathan was oblivious to the fact that hers was a case of blatant plagiarism. What I was referring to is academic plagiarism in classroom notes and answers found in tests. Students in India find framing answers by lifting passages from critics a completely innocuous exercise.

Darby has ruined any hope that I had left of a cozy luncheon this Tuesday with two rather erudite Professors of Philosophy who seem to inhabit two opposite poles, and a famous Italian novelist. What would have been really interesting is that the novelist happens to be a high school teacher. It seems Darby's chronic tummy troubles need to be addressed and resolved first. However, I have something else to look forward to - a rather interesting wining-and-dining experience at S.D.'s tomorrow evening. We will also have the pleasure of meeting an ex-colleague of S.D.'s who, as trusted sources inform me, has something in common with me. We both cherish teasing S.D. Can't wait for sunset tomorrow.
Spent yesterday morning watching 'Savage Grace' and spent the afternoon wondering what is it that attracts me to troubled, dysfunctional characters. I still have no clue, but will come up shortly with a personal review of the film.