The Great Depression

Tonight, it was Chaplin's "Modern Times" at the India Habitat Centre and the turn of the gamine, Ellen Peterson, played by Paulette Goddard.

Paulette Goddard (June 3, 1910 – April 23, 1990) was an American film and theatre actress. A former child fashion model and in several Broadway productions as Ziegfeld Girl, she was a major star of the Paramount Studio in the 1940s. She was married to several notable men, including Charlie Chaplin, Burgess Meredith and Erich Maria Remarque. Goddard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in So Proudly We Hail! (1943).

I don't like her. At all. Must be the unbearable lightness of being. Flaky, fickle, feisty, frivolous, pseudofeminine air sign.

"Yes, I Can See Now"

I saw her last night at the India Habitat Centre. Not in person. In the movie "City Lights". I liked her there so I ran a Google search on her and this is what Wikipedia had to say, among other things...

"Virginia Cherrill (April 12, 1908 - November 14, 1996) was an American actress best known for her role as the blind flower girl in Charlie Chaplin's City Lights (1931). Due to marrying an English earl in the 1940s, she is also known as Virginia Child-Villiers, Countess of Jersey.

Virginia Cherrill was born on a farm in rural Carthage, Illinois, to James E. and Blanche (née Wilcox) Cherrill. She was a Chicago society girl with no thoughts of a film career when she went to Hollywood for a visit and met Charlie Chaplin when he sat next to her at a boxing match. He had failed to find the girl he wanted for his film but decided she would do and cast her in City Lights in which she gave the performance for which she is remembered, although her working relationship with Chaplin on the film was often strained. As indicated in the documentary Unknown Chaplin, Cherrill was in fact fired from the film at one point and Chaplin planned to refilm all her scenes with Georgia Hale, but ultimately realized too much money had already been spent on the picture; as Cherrill recalls in the documentary, close friend Marion Davies suggested Cherrill hold out for more money when Chaplin asked her to return to the film, and she did."

There's a point in the movie at which Chaplin steals some money so that the girl can pay her rent and get her eyes operated on. When she eventually gets her eyesight back and recognizes Chaplin as her benefactor, she says, to an apprehensive Chaplin, "Yes, I Can See Now". Reading about her real life relationship with Chaplin, I felt so deflated. I don't know if they really had a strained relationship or if this helps in some way to heighten the curiosity about their chemistry. Does reading about it help me conclude that she looks bad-tempered in the photograph above? Is it the reason I chose this snap of hers from all the others on the internet?

And All The Things I Deserve...

...For being such a good girl... honey.

I don't like sardines. Just bought it for Mom. Fried it a bit, spilled it on my dress and then hastened to wash my hair. Sunflowers. The curse of happiness. Like people laughing at me. Slow learners like Voldemort. Wouldn't it have been better if they stripped him of his powers and forced him to live among muggles as one of them? A coughing doctor, living with germs. A troubled psychologist, living with people.

Keep Breathing

Some days, the geyser doesn't work. The sink is full of dirty dishes. Birds peck at the "plain rice" I ordered from the dhaba. Flies hover around the rim of my tea-cup. Cats claw at the garbage bag. The door can't be bolted and I struggle with security. Lizards poop on the mosquito net. The charger hangs loose from the plug-point. I can't switch off the lights and I can't get sleep.

But the smell of fresh laundry curled up like a lovable pet inside the LG Fabricare 3-Step Automatic Washing Machine makes all the bad go away. It's like running back home from the playground and burying my face in Mom.

I am in Silence

It all began when he asked me if I knew what "the sound of silence" means. Since he was neither Simon, nor Garfunkel, I found it deeply insulting.

Hell, I invented Silence. How could he question me?

It came back a few days ago. The way my heart pounded silently. What you don't hear when Madonna and Timberlake team up with Timbaland for 4 minutes. Tick tock.

When I went out for a walk today, it happened again. The campus is full of hidden life that makes its presence known through actions and non-actions. It grows on you, like Harman Baweja in "What's Your Raashee?" and Luna Lovegood in the Harry Potter books.

So there was this cricket, making a ruckus and oddly enough, seemingly in sync with my footsteps. I quickened my pace. So did the cricket! I fell back. And there it was, right on cue. A little later, someone started playing the dhaak. It's the drum they play in Bengal during the Durga Puja. And since the festive season has officially begun, this had to happen sooner or later. Except that the cricket and the dhaak churned an intoxicating symphony. They didn't need me anymore. I needed them, instead.

Isn't it irritating when people try to interpret your silences? As if you don't deserve a life filled merely with sensations? As if pleasure needs a purpose. As if Julia Roberts really needed someone like Javier Bardem in "Eat. Pray. Love.".. why did he turn on the music anyway? Why did he fill in the blanks? Why do people always fill in the blanks?

Let the vacuum be. Don't claim it!

Don't ascribe meaning to my silence as if it's a land that you discovered and conquered. There "is" no meaning anyway. You created it for your convenience. Don't make me sit with the fruits and vegetables as you shop for grocery.

I sit when I need to watch and remember and hear the world go by. I sit, drinking tea or coffee. The boys outside the Transit House clap and cheer as the men's doubles badminton match heats up the sneaky coolness of a lazy evening. There are flies all around, dogs barking for redemption, theories built and torn apart all in a smoky minute. My mobile flickers for mercy. The promise of silence because the battery is low. I am gravitating towards that light at the end of the torpor. The promise of solitude in Dehradun. The promise of transformation in Kalkaji. I stop being the only girl watching the match and turn into a dot, invisible to the aeroplanes that whooshed by... high.. high above. Why do they let me pay them later for the tea? Why do they trust me? Why do they remember me?

Why does she call me "dear"? She calls me a bird. I want to believe I can fly. She tries to imply that I have a nest.

Untagged photographs on Facebook. Silence hurts. He won't let go of me if she doesn't let him go.

The racquet whipped the air. And again! And yet again! That's the sound I want for my slideshow. I want bulletpoints. And the sound of authority. The sound of black. A cold squeal. A rumble, like someone cleared their throat. It doesn't matter if they speak after that. They don't need to.

Tweet, Mockingbird

Like I said, I teach English to Middle School students nowadays. The students recently appeared in their First Semester Examinations and Sixth Grade had, among others, a chapter called "Sing, Mockingbird". It's about a girl called Little Feather who valued her pretty feathered bird friends and often looked disdainfully at the not-so-attractive Sister Mockingbird. But then, one fine day, down with fever and quite sure that she won't make it without her bird friends, she is nursed back to health by their songs all night long...only to discover in the morning that it was the Mockingbird all along. That's when she discovers the true value of friendship.

The new term will find no mention of the mockingbird. My own experience with the bird began with Harper Lee's classic and ended a few years later with Eminem's autobiographical music video. Except that now, after reading that chapter, I just can't stop thinking about the Mockingbird. To sing your song for others to listen and heal with, to choose a life of anonymity and yet, cherish every bit of the startling miracle that the onlookers can't just walk past, you need more than pretty feathers for that.

A Mockingbird creates meaning in brief bursts. It doesn't have a story. It's more like a tweet. I mean it. If she were a human, you would find her on Twitter! It's like a patchwork quilt. Experiences stitched together and carried along quite like Hanuman and his mountain, on his quest for the Sanjeevani. A soldier would call it the armamentarian approach and to a researcher, it would just be data collection. Usha ma'am (God rest her soul), our Hindi teacher from school, introduced us to this beautiful word when we were 14; har-fan-maula. It's a bit like being the jack of all trades, but sounds ever so much lyrical.

A Mockingbird lives her life like a sharp, shooting beep. She loses sight of herself and her life. She is scared that she will never be completely honest with herself. It's a cursed life. If she could, she would have run away from herself just like Forrest Gump tried.

She could never have a bucket list. Words and experiences change meaning in her world like the moving staircases at Hogwarts. It would bother her that her wildest streaks would be tamer than she would want them to be. She would discard every pang of jealousy that crept in and reared it's head when a bird with pretty feathers walked by. She wouldn't sit on that barbed wire even if you made her pretty for a day.

She can't stop lying. She cannot be defined. Don't cage her with your promises of fame. She never promised you anything. She entertains you because she feels the pleasure it gives her. And that is the only thing in the world that she can trust.

Bearing Fruit

Last night, I was overcome by a sudden desire to eat healthy. So on the way back from Khan Market (which is looking extremely pretty, by the way, because of the Khan Market Shopping Festival - "Shop, Dine and Cloud 9" from 3rd to 14th October 2010, to accompany the CWG), I took a rare swerve and walked into the Safal Fruits and Vegetables store, wide-eyed like a tourist. It was pretty late at night and the attractive yellow balls (fruits, yes) on my extreme right could be second only to the much needed papayas right next to them.

I hope you didn't miss the part about me not being on TLC. The papayas were an interesting green with splotches of yellow. Like a fresh adult, I sent a message to my Mother, asking her how to detect which is the correct shade of Papaya to be bought. She replied "Yellow". I bought something that looked like the one in the photograph above. Her message reached me just after I reached home carrying the papaya in one hand and a yellow ball in the other. They didn't have carry-bags. All I got was a pair of newspaper cartons to manage with.

While walking back with the two paperclad balls in my hands, it suddenly occurred to me that in a parallel universe, I could be Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan and the fruits could be human skulls.

Would it be hideously inappropriate to laugh?

P.S.: Er.. I should throw the Papaya away. Unless fruits ripen by themselves, that is. Do they? Don't they? Wait.. isn't that some kind of virus on the fruit?