How not to beat around the bush

The one thing that writing poetry does to you is, (over a period of time) help you craft a crystal clear mirror -- for your self.

This mirror doesn't lie, it just cannot lie. In fact, its a mirror that is painfully honest to a fault and best not seen into, even glanced into. But poets being poets probably cannot escape getting eye to eye with its "dazzling" visage. The result is poetry that cuts to the bone and shows everything in between (something that a lot people out there would call self-reflexive) especially the wounds that have not healed and the collected scar tissue of the years.

Unless they are professional poets, or poets writing for a cause or something equally safe.

What do I see in the mirror I look into?

A fat middle-aged man with almost no social skills.

A professional for whom work means the hard labour of words.

A pair of bum ears who have never managed to deal with truisms like "what women want".   

A hustler of poetry books.

Hmmm....


*************

Talking of being fat (or well-built and big and lumbering), one thing many people (and not necessarily women or for that matter dainty / waifish women) have wanted to know from me is how I can handle the weight of the Sigma and the Nikon D90 (D600) so well, while not using a tripod*. I guess in an evolutionary sort of way, totally self-taught, I have managed to learn a stance that works for me, and a stance that uses my girth to the best advantage.

Other advantages of this girth are a "full frame" and a shoulder breadth that helps me lug my photography gear for long distances pretty well. Can't say comfortably; even a mule wouldn't like being laden with 5 kilos of weight day in and day out, no?

But how do you hide all that to the cameras? And lately, I gave away my Ray Bans as well...

I know for a fact that birding burns a lot of calories, its just that I haven't done it with much consistency for almost two months now.

The question is -- does writing poetry (and the worries of bringing out a book) put back all those calories? 


**************

Indie.

That's a good, honest and even fashionable word.

And its "indie"cative of someone small and low-budget and someone more concerned about the quality of what is being created -- a film, music, poetry or other art -- rather than the thousand and one associated / supporting / supplementary things.

Also, someone who is broke plying a trade and trying to cut costs to the barest minimum, of course.

I have talked earlier about lugging my books (the full frame and the breadth of the shoulders help, also I am slightly mulish when it comes to weights, I can carry a lot of it) and I must say they weigh a lot, they weigh a lot...a new experience this time was carrying my own bird photographs.

Thankfully, they did not weigh that much (is it because they were of weightless things, birds?) but still, all that bulk and still the fear of all that glass breaking!

Poets, its said live in a world of heartbreak.

Bird photography is more heartbreak than any other genre of photography. Comparatively shooting glamour is like turning up at office and writing code (or clearing files).

But transporting glazed photographs in an Auto wheezing and stuttering its way through the maddening and chaotic traffic of Hyderabad takes the cake (and the Double Ka Meetha) any day.

Or maybe I am just getting old.       


*The credit is not entirely due to me, the Sigma 150-500 has amazing Image Stabilization properties, and this is digital after all...  

 



   

The cynicism of faith (and other truths)

I have faith and I want to be good and happy; and yes, at one level, I have always wanted to be a normal person with a normal life, like most others out there.

But instead, here I am -- having just brought out another book of poetry, still dealing with the hustle of placing it here and there.

Lugging books in haversacks and hustling them to people who probably have absolutely no trust in the merits of poetry as a genre or no understanding of the value of the medium.

I mean, I have done this twice before -- lugging books here and there, couriering them to Flipkart, even couriering them to individual buyers, couriering them to some great / established names...

And now, I will be doing all this a third time.

I guess, that's normal for some.



************


A quick look at two lies associated with poetry.

Fame.

Money.

You know of any other?

Do tell.



***********

To end this post on a bright note (so to say).

It has rained quite a lot in Hyderabad in the past week or so. And since I have wandered a bit on my feet all around my place for the past two years as well, I would say, they have arrived almost two weeks earlier than they usually do.

I mean, the buffalo wallow did not dry to a puddle this year, nor some of the quarries through which I had walked, raising dust, in the years past.

I am not saying the heat was any lesser -- for some 2 weeks in end May, it was positively infernal. And that was when (while out in the 40 degree heat in the afternoon, hoping to come across a nightjar) that I saw lapwings belly-wetting and also came across a yellow-wattled lapwing's nest.

There, there...let me not digress, the rains have arrived earlier than usual and like for most, its a relief to me as well.

Yes, its a big relief to see the same earth that seemed as lifeless as a baked brick in summer, grow green -- a green that defies description, and in fact makes you stop and search through all your soul and being for that one word which could express its dazzle and sheen when it catches the sunlight...

And its a bigger relief to know that the poems still come to me.

Maybe it is allowed for poets to hustle. As long as the hustling is of poetry books.

A tribute to Jagjit Singh, the master of melancholy

On October 10th, while I was at Varanasi (and dealing with the
melancholy of my moods -- I have always associated Varanasi with
the cremation ghats and the Kasidaasins -- and the cacophonies
of the city) Ghazal Maestro Jagjit Singh passed away after a
protracted illness.

He was 70, but like most singers (and poets, painters and
artists) he will never have an age, never die for those who
have known and experienced the spellbinding depth of his voice.

I am not a music aficionado, nor can I claim to be any kind of a
connoisseur -- of the fascinating world of "old Hindi" -- of quiz
details like who wrote the lyrics of which song, who composed the
music and who were the lead pair and so on.

Heck, I am one of those rare ignoramuses who cannot decide for
sure if a particular song has been sung by Rafi or Mukesh. And at
the very outset, I need to make a clean breast of the fact that I
know zilch about the intricacies of music, I cannot differentiate
between a khayal and a thumri or whatever...

But -- though I am a layman and have absolutely no "ear for
music" -- for as long as I remember, I have been singing old
hindi songs to myself and since most of these songs used to be
slow, sad, melancholy numbers in which the song is more or less
a lyric accompanied by music, in the repeated singing to myself,
I have ingrained those cadences and rhythms...and also burnt
those lines...on my being.

You could also say that somewhere in the singing of those songs
is when I developed the "ambition" of becoming a shayar / kavi /
poet and long before I really had to deal with any loss, I
probably realized (and made peace with the realization) that
immaterial of how true the lie called "happiness" is, life's
underlying truth is that it is melancholy, and dark and
layered with pathos, more or less as expressed in the lines

राही मनवा दुःख की चिंता क्यों सताती है
दुःख तो अपना साथी है

सुख है एक छाँव, ढलती आती जाती है
दुःख तो अपना साथी है

(from the film Dosti)

And yes, (as I keep telling everyone) somewhere along the same
time I realised the depth of meaning (three layers of
imagination, location, analogy, metaphor, whatever) in the
lines

कहीं दूर जब दिन ढल जाये
सांझ की दुल्हन बदन चुराए, चुप के से आये

and have always wanted to write lines that are as vivid, as
imaginative, as powerful. And yes, for me Hindi will always be
the the language of gravitas, meant for writing down and
chronicling the occasional untranslatable line that is truest
the way it comes and not for the frivolity of communicating
banalities like

फ्रेश फ्रूट जूस पार्लर

So maybe immaterial of all my known and unknown shortcomings,
I am qualified to write about Jagjit Singh, considering that
most of his songs had an unsurpassable element of gravitas
and melancholy, if not downright gut-wrenching sadness and I
have connected to them, heard them on a radio, a cassette player,
etc.; heard them sung by friends and sang them to friends while
high on rum and coke in a bonding that was in all probability
more about teenage angst than it was about the rum or the song
itself. And yes, most of those lines are burnt in my being, the
same way lines of poetry are.

So they still reverberate in me, even these days when I don't
listen to any music thanks to my bum ears.

So they still reverberate in me, and in fact I can creditably
sing some of them, closing my eyes and going along with the
flow of blessed memory, of remembered song.

Like, for instance this song that a friend (here in Hyderabad)
used to repeatedly sing -- at cafes, in the college parking
lot, at his place ostensibly for combined studies (in the balcony
while sharing a smoke) up at 2.00 in the night, and at all
those Rum Coke sessions.

प्यार का पहला ख़त लिखने में वक़्त तो लगता है
नयी परिंदों को उड़ने में वक़्त तो लगता है

Need I mention that those were the days when my friend was
going through a phase of "should I propose?", "dare I propose?",
"what if she rejects me?" and all those questions that run pell mell
through a young man wooing a young woman?

Or, the exquisitely hummable, oh-so-simple, right from the heart
echoing call of

होंठों से छु लो तुम
मेरा गीत अमर कर दो

बन जाओ मीत मेरे
मेरा प्रीत अमर कर दो

that I used to sing along with the cassette player and while
serenading my own loneliness in buses (and the occasional Auto)
while still into my second year in Hyderabad. Did I mention I
was lonely? Oh yes, its confession time, I used to keep a diary
those days and almost every week used to start with the entry --
"Need to decide what to do in life and need to get a girlfriend
soon"...So maybe, that song was Jagjit Singh singing to my elusive
girlfriend, or he and I singing together, or me singing it to
myself, while Jagjit Singh would lip synch to a spell bound
audience.

There were other Jagjit Singh songs too -- that I listened
to in rapt attention (and sang to myself) as I would beg borrow
and steal any Jagjit Singh (and Yesudas and other Ghazal / Old
Hindi) cassettes that I could and since I never got around to
getting hooked to "pop music" (maybe because I couldn't get the
lyrics over all that high frequency "music") and just had
three other cassettes -- Yanni, Khaled and Eric Clapton to
listen to, I would get bored of the "change" pretty soon and go
back to Jagjit Singh.

And thus, I got to hear the wonderfully knowing

तुम इतना जो मुस्कुरा रहे हो
क्या गम है जिसको छुपा रहे हो

The intensely romantic

तुम को देखा तो ये ख्याल आया
जिंदगी धुप तुम घना साया

and so many others, that though I can't recollect them now -- are
as familiar and permanent as the memories of old friends.

But the one song that made Jagjit Singh what he is to me is the
one where he is less of melody, technique and nuance but completely
and absolutely a requiem of grief, a gut-wrenching voice calling
out in the totality of the pain of loss. The song (if I remember
right) he sang after the death of his only son --

दर्द से मेरा दामन भर दे या अल्लाह
फिर चाहे दीवाना कर दे या अल्लाह

In all probability someone more knowledgeable or well read than me
had told me this and maybe I read more into this song because I
know (or think I know) what Jagjit Singh means by "dard" and
"deewana" in the song...I could be wrong about all that...
but somehow this has to be the ultimate song when it comes to loss
and grief for me.

The ultimate.

You will be the ultimate ever for me Jagjit Singh Ji, the
ultimate, and forever alive, because I don't even need to listen
to your songs to connect with the blessed oeuvre that you have
voiced for us, left behind for us...

For your ultimate songs reverberate in me, resonate in me, reside in
me.

As found poems.

And memories where I can find more poetry.

Thank you.

A lust for life (and lenses)

I never learned how to paint. And, I am sure the little man
can sketch / doodle better than me; I mean he would have done
it far better than me even before he started going to "drawing
classes". But it has been said by some of my readers that there
is a bit of the imagist in my poems. Or rather, I have been told
that some of my poems are rich in "starkly vivid, photograph like
imagery" and that I "juxtapose allegory and metaphor with images
to draw pen pictures".

Is it because I am trying to paint with words? Or is it because
when (I take a photograph) or try to drink in a landscape / view
with my mind's eye -- immaterial of if I am already "writing" the
poem or gazing at the beauty of the outdoors in

awe, the poem has already taken root in me?

You know what this means. Yes, it means that everything that I
see is potentially an image that can be drawn in words, a poem.
And from the very time I have realized that I have been
boggled -- not at the prospect of what masterpieces I may be
destined to draw but at the scarier one. Of not being fast enough
or receptive enough to draw all the poems that come to me.

For being unable to focus all my being into the poem, for
doubting it, and for so on and so forth...

But then, all said and done, its a good problem to have;
its better than being totally closed to poetry and being
unable to write (drafts) with originality fed by immediacy.

Or so I feel.

I don't know if I can "devote" my life to poetry. Its tough
as it is dealing with the trickles that my "self" lets in.
Its tough as it is dealing with the epiphanies that come
unbidden, but still the greed remains -- for more. The greed
remains -- for more "writerly purpose", extended periods of
"writing in the zone" and for the overwhelming lust for life,
one that teaches a complete focus on art, to the point of being
madly obsessed with it -- Van Gogh like.

And yes, the greed remains; for better lenses. Yes, lenses that
give me a wider angle on life, and lenses that let me zoom in
and block out all that is irrelevant too -- for though I may
not be primarily be a photographer, many of my poems come to
be through my eye.

As I go down on my knees, in reverence and awe.

On seeing two young tradesmen in a bus

Neither of them looked as if they had ever shaved. Both were wearing thick, very workmansy jeans (of the type -- I still keep searching for, but fail to find in the brand showrooms -- that prospectors, cowboys and bikers favour for durability and ruggedness) and full-sleeved shirts and were well groomed and looking more or less like any urban 15-16 year old's would.

Both were also wearing boyish expressions of delight, as if they were going to a circus, cinema or cricket match. But immaterial of the boyish looks and their "holidayish" mein, these two were evidently headed for work and holding the tools of their trade in their hands.

One had an axe (the axehead comprising of a piece of a metal rib plate turned into an "O" at one end and sharpened at the other, with a still green and uncured handle of wood passing through the "O") and the other had a rudimentary machete -- a curved work knife of the kind used to cut open green coconuts or slice firewood, solidly fitted onto a handle; again of still green and uncured wood.

While I watched them -- standing in the bus with one shoulder tensed up by the grip of my arm on the grab rail and the other weighed down by the pendulum swing of the bag that carries what could be another tool of trade for me -- my DSLR -- I let me eyes do a surreptitious crawl of their faces, looking at them as subjects for my photographic eye. And noted that one of them had slightly brown hair with curls so fine he could have passed off for a Hasidic Jew and the other had a well shaped, almost aquiline nose and big wide-spaced eyes. Naturally, I started mentally calculating camera angles, aperture and shutter settings while thinking that both of them made eminent subjects and were worth working on for a day in a studio or outdoors with the sun blazing in resplendence.

Meanwhile the bus stopped and the boys got down, carefully making their way through the throng in the bus -- headed for a day's work -- at some site overgrown with Lantana and other scrub, in all probability; hands on each others shoulders.

I continued on in the bus, with the DSLR doing its pendulum swing on my shoulder.

Onto another day at work.

Part tradesman, part logophile, I work with my hands, labour with words -- I write.

In Memorium

Of all the things in life, ways death is the fastest. And someone you have known for years, someone who has been part of the trials, tribulations and (minor) triumphs of a substantial and important part of your life, can go in a "poof", literally in the blink of an eye. And yeah, however much you remember the good times spent together, however much you cry (or however much you pray) there are no lifelines or second innings after death has come calling.

Yes, he is gone and this has been so bloody fast, a realisation that still hasn't sunk in, even as countless old memories cascade through me and grief assails me, at odd times for odd reasons.

The most painful memory is his constant ill-health (he was prone to asthma attacks) and thinness. Something that used to bother me a lot, something that I used to blame his lack of appetite for, something that he used to overcome again and again through a sheer bloodyminded stubbornness and the intent to live up his life.

Another enduring memory is his fastidiousness in trying to understand whatever interested him. He was a great note-taker and would fill diaries and notebooks (and bar napkins) with beautifully scripted notes, capturing the essence of our conversations on all and sundry -- advertising and corporate communications, the location of various eminent Shiva temples, what he should eat to put on weight, various quotes dealing with corporate life, sensational one-liners for Tee-shirts and (intermittently for as long as I have nursed entrepreneurial ambitions and with increasing frequency for the last year or so) answers to "how to start something of our own"...

In his opinion, I was a great talker, passionately genuine and capable of convincing people. Maybe it was just because he was one of the most considerate listeners I have ever met -- full of empathy and understanding and someone who saw potential and uniqueness in everybody. Either way -- a lot of our time used to be devoted to planning road trips and incidentally it was he who introduced me to Srisailam. I have vivid memories of each of three trips we made to Srisailam together -- the first time by bus, the second by my Bullet (with him as a very alive and "in my ear" pillion rider) and the third in blazing Mid-May heat in his car. Srisailam and our many experiences (viewpoints on the stretch to Eaglepenta, my Obelix like ascent of the Paatalganga Ghat, coracle rides on the reservoir, Shikaram, Sankaracharya Ghat, etc.) apart, he also introduced me to Uma Maheshwaram -- one of the famed entrances to Srisailam and a place where a Jatara happens every year. A Jatara we both had planned to -- and failed to -- attend numerous times.

Then there are other memories too, of hiking and monkeying around in Narsapur forest and near Shamirpet Lake and (a lot earlier, going back to my MBA days) in the glorious boulder strewn grassy open expanses beyond Hayathnagar.

Looking back, I am not surprised to recollect that he was among the first to read my diaries (and the ravings in them) and my poems. And that he was again among the first to read the manuscript of Moving On -- speaking of which, he somehow made it to the book release event though he was in the midst of Ayyappa Deeksha.

I could go on and on, the memories seem endless and enough to fill a book. I could go on and on, but the fact remains that I couldn't spend much time with him or be of any help to him in his last days, when he was ailing.

I could go on and on, but its pretty evident that however deep my grief be, its not even a drop in the ocean of grief that his family finds itself in.

I do know that I will miss him for the rest of my life. And I know that I spent some of my best years adventuring, raconteuring and experiencing life with him.

I also know that in my own way I will never get over this loss; mostly because of the kind of person I am and also because of who he was -- a treasured batchmate, a long-time room-mate and a very, very close friend, one of the most private and yet liveliest people I have been fortunate enough to know.

And I know that when my turn comes and I land up in heaven (hopefully) Chandra Mouli will in his part school-monitorish, part hrvisionary mentorish way give me a guided tour of the place and introduce me to its highpoints, the way he did it for me when I arrived in Hyderabad.

I am not Jewish, and there is no Kaddish (or its Hindu equivalent) known to me. But I have been praying since 20th April, 2011 that my late departed friend's soul merge with Shiva. And find solace in Kailash.

Om Namah Shivaya.

Exile, reclusion and the yoke of being a "writer"

I have always wondered how much of being a good / exceptional / great writer is about the actual output of work and how much of it is the attitude / approach / philosophy of the writer.

After all, there are those who write reams and reams of what is barely passable without more or less any effort apart from what goes into a job, with drudgery that is routine; and then there are those who approach their writing as the acme of their very existence -- slogging it out mentally (and physically) on rewrite after rewrite to come up with one (in their own standards) "passable" page or paragraph.

Then again, there are those who are so enmeshed in and haunted by the very idea of writing something exceptional that they never get down to the routine or work at making the routine better :-) When not brooding with Heathcliffian miens or intent on drunken ruin like the painter in "The Last Leaf" such people make for great literary conversationalists and are most of the time voracious readers -- the type who will vitriolically tear apart any writing that is not "great". Speaking of readers, I personally am of the opinion that a "great" reader is just a "great" writer who decided to be lazy (for life?) and also couldn't deal with the "this is getting too personal" stage when it came to splattering everything out in ink...

Or for that matter, when it comes to shaping the writer, moulding that mettle, what matters the most? Pain, suffering, dispossession, identity crises, which of this is the truest of the crucibles :-) ?

I am not being rhetorical but neither do I have the answer. Roberto Bolano seems to make a really strong case for Exile, read it all here

I liked this bit a lot; maybe because I keep thinking of getting away from it all, even now and write as if I was condemned to it :-)

"What does a politician do in prison? What does a lawyer do in the hospital? Anything but work. What, on the other hand, does a writer do in prison or in the hospital? He works. Sometimes he even works a lot. And that’s not even to mention poets. Of course the claim can be made that in prison the libraries are no good and that in hospitals there are often are no libraries. It can be argued that in most cases exile means the loss of the writer’s books, among other material losses, and in some cases even the loss of his papers, unfinished manuscripts, projects, letters. It doesn’t matter. Better to lose manuscripts than to lose your life. In any case, the point is that the writer works wherever he is, even while he sleeps, which isn’t true of those in other professions. Actors, it can be said, are always working, but it isn’t the same: the writer writes and is conscious of writing, whereas the actor, under great duress, only howls. Policemen are always policemen, but that isn’t the same either, because it’s one thing to be and another to work. The writer is and works in any situation. The policeman only is. The same is true of the professional assassin, the soldier, the banker. Whores, perhaps, come closest in the exercise of their profession to the practice of literature."


And oh yes, don't miss the poetry!

"In one fragment, Archilochus doesn’t hesitate to admit that in the midst of battle, probably a skirmish, he drops his arms and goes running, which for the Greeks was undoubtedly the greatest mark of shame, let alone for a soldier who has to earn his daily bread by his courage in combat. Archilochus says:

Some Saian mountaineer
Struts today with my shield.
I threw it down behind a bush and ran
When the fighting got hot.
Life seemed somehow more precious.
It was a beautiful shield.
I know where I can buy another
Exactly like it, just as round."

Oh, to be born an island! Or in an age when there was far more time and far less things that needed to be done

Midway musings

I really don't know where I am headed.

Or where I started from, for that matter.

You see, peculiarly enough both the beginning and end of this journey is me; maybe when I arrive, I will be a more footsore me, maybe when I reach, I will be a better me, but then isn't that a natural progression in life?

That we get better, wiser, tireder(??) with age?

Yes, I said "age". I am sure you will agree, 40 days would constitute an important factor of "time /age", being 1/10 of a year after all!

Lately, I have realised that I don't have a very good equation with time, and that I absolutely abhor summer. And though (I am sure) I will continue to be under the attack of delusions and imaginations (how real is poetry, anyway?) I do realise that however much I live within myself, the other will be time.

Sometimes holding a mirror to my face.

Sometimes brushing by as a cat's paw, redolent with deja` vu, leaving me flummoxed and then making me chase after it, to decipher meanings and craft words...and make sense of memories.

Sometimes like an endless road that just loses itself into the horizon.

Which means even if I do nothing, time will move and I would have journeyed, in terms of time.

So, this journey then; though in many ways not a patch on the toil and hardships of the real Deeksha, I do feel like a pilgrim and as day follows day in the march of time, there is progress too and I am now midway.

"Does the stillness of this silence say
that there's no beginning and no end -- here midway?"

Tripping on :-)

Mornings and Musings

(Post my childhood) I have never been an early morning person, maybe because I have never been an early night person :-)In my early days in Hyderabad, somehow going to bed was similar to saying goodbye to the day that's past, mostly in a mood of mellow contentment at having achieved something, or because of being absolutely and totally bone-tired. That was rarely my case, and for some reasons, I always seemed to have been dealing with the unfinished, as if there was something I had not told someone, or as if there is a thought still not properly formed in my mind, so....

This of course means that there have been more nights than I can remember -- of not sleeping at all, reading up or talking to someone equally intent on not sleeping, or going for a ride (and waiting for the Irani Chhai to be served at quaintly named Cafes like Taftian, Rising Sun, Rock Sea, Friends Circle or Great India) or writing, or listening to the same songs over and over again.

Like, this one for instance*.

Dheere Dheere Subah Huyi **

This is not to say that I cannot get up early in the mornings or that I have not got up early in the mornings. But getting up that early is not a habit or a routine or a set pattern or whatshallIcallit in my case.

(You probably would be right in saying that I don't have any patterns at all, but then neither of us know me well enough.)

Whatever may be said in favor of sleeping late, getting up early in the morning gives an amazing high. I have been told (by a friend who himself was an early riser) that sleep is bliss and waking up someone who is sleeping is like breaking a magic spell or shattering a wondrous dream but I would say that getting up early in the morning (out of one's own volition and choice) is probably the best way to start a new day.

And I guess, sleep is anyway a big waste of time, all said and done :-)

* In my Kimtee Colony, Tarnaka days, among other things, the Internet wasn't all pervasive then. This is when "The Old Woman of Lalapet" happened.
** From one of my numerous past lives, yes. Please don't send me hate mail in case you don't like Jeetendra. I used to just listen to this song, or you can say, used to trip on it, never "saw" the song before today.

Flashbacks of a fool -- is "this" important?

As far as confessions go, "this" isn't much and deals with an almost open secret about me.

Even the little man seems to be understanding how to get around "this" now and mimes for me, when he is in a patient / ultra-communicative mood.

So, if you are wondering why I am disclosing "this" now, frankly there is no specific reason.

Yet, since this is the first time ever I am writing about "this" at length, one can say I am coming out of a peculiar and strange closet.

By "closet", I am referring to a close circle of people who know about "this" -- family, friends, colleagues (lot of them past, some current) and probably some readers who have guessed what "this" is, either by reading Hoshang Ji's foreword to my book or by reading the poems where I refer to "this", in a multi-layered, far from direct, maybe stoic way.

By "closet", I am not referring to my sexual orientation, this post is not about that.

Peculiarly enough my decision to "come out of the closet" was made long back -- on the first of this June -- on one of the beaches opposite Thotlakonda (near Vizag) just after I had attended my Grandmother's fourth death anniversary.

Maybe this decision was influenced by the occasion-strengthened memories of her -- I can't claim to have got over her loss but with every passing year, on attending her death ceremony, I get a heightened understanding of the grace, charisma and silent dignity with which she had lived her life.

Maybe this decision was influenced by the other-worldliness of that beach setting -- a sun-splashed evening of what was an overcast day, when as I lay / sat amidst the surf and gazed out to sea (with the only other person on the beach being my 10 year old nephew -- goose-stepping and stilt-walking to stay dry) a white-bellied sea eagle flew in and passed barely two coconut palm trunk lengths / heights away from me, the extremities of its wings burning a russet gold as they caught the setting sun, almost meeting at the "down-flap" while it furiously beat them to get higher, now that it was above land.

Either it was the occasion or the setting but from the very moment I decided to acknowledge "this", wave after wave of self-realization kept washing over me.

I may write about these self-realizations sometime soon and in all probability here itself.

Or I may decide not to.

Or I may deal with them through my poetry.

Or I may decide not to.

But it was pretty clear then (and is even more clearer now) that I have been a fool in the way I have dealt with "this". It was also clear that "this" will not go away and since my pride won't go away either, life will not get any easier for me.

So then, the "this". I am what I would choose to be called "Hard of Hearing".

No, I don't like being referred to by derivatives of "hearing challenged", "hearing impaired" or other glorified politically correct words which mean nothing but "hearing disability", because I don't consider my being Hard of Hearing a disability.

And yes, you are welcome to blame this on the pride I mentioned earlier.

At least in my case, its important that I retain my pride and dignity, because from what I have learned, the world doesn't understand the strange world of being "Hard of Hearing". For instance, the world (at least that of recruiters and other strangers who interact with me based on quaint checklists) assumes that the Hard of Hearing are good for nothing and discriminates -- either by shying away as if repelled or by assuming dystopian scenarios of my capabilities where I probably come across as someone needing a dole, kindness, sympathy, whatever...

That's something which will never cut ice with me, since I have an overpowering aversion, almost bordering the physical when it comes to dealing with misplaced senses of superciliousness / arrogance manifesting as kindness.

So then, the "this". I am Hard of Hearing and I do have a far from easy day (with family, work or with friends / colleagues) when my hearing aids don't work properly.

Yes, life's tough as it is, and even tougher when one is mistaken for a freak / retard / loonie if he cannot hear (properly).

No, I am not in denial, I have no problem in explaining the degree of my "Hard of Hearing" ness, the nature, the other nitty-gritty involved in it, but believe me its a long, "very very" technical story that you may not understand totally and I will find boring.

I mean, it's the progressive story of something like ten years of my life and by now it bores me.

And oh yes, the "this" doesn't mean I am a recluse, or not social. Not more than any other poet / writer I know or you know.

It means (among other difficulties I face on a routine "bad ear" day) that I cannot converse on phones and find it difficult to follow conversations at crowded places (like conference rooms of companies, poetry readings, cocktail evenings and bars).

Or, you could say that when my hearing aids don't work, I hear almost nothing of voices.

Apart from some friends (most of whom anyway know about "this") I really don't know who visits this blog. Frankly, I don't blog much and I certainly haven't promoted this blog. So I don't really expect anything earth-shattering to happen because of this blog post.

My days will go on, mellowly delightful when poetry comes or surging with adrenaline when I chase it. Some days (some at least) will hopefully be full of poems "written" down and "rewritten" down and stashed away. And someday soon (hopefully soon) I will sit down and plan the next book too.

Is poetry life? Is life poetry? Which should I consider a bigger priority? I don't know.

Talking of life, I will still treat it as a gift meant to be lived and chase adventures endeavoring to love and laugh as much as I can.

WTF, hearing aids or no hearing aids, I have one life and I intend to live it.

P.S. -- I know I probably come across as a bit angry. And whatever you may think about it, the pride / dignity / anger is important to me, so I will retain it, thank you so much.

P.P.S -- So, if I had decided to disclose / confess / uncloset "this" at the beginning of June, why did it take me so long? Firstly, I did not know what that bird was, took me a bit of thinking and googling to figure out it was a "white-bellied". Secondly, I had to figure out how to be best described and that took time too, I will settle for "Hard of Hearing", thank you. Thirdly, among other crazy things that have happened to me in the last two months, I have lost one hearing aid and taken up 2 other sets for trials -- and been battered and bruised by the chaos of voices machine-gunning into my head. And lastly, I have been busy with the demands of writing copy (and some poetry).

P.P.P.S -- The title of this blog post is borrowed from a Daniel Craig movie that I have seen more than 4-5 times on the telly. Late at night, with subtitles (of course).