Home > Work > In The Land of The Lovers
1 " Departures could be delightful. Pregnant with possibility. Perhaps this urge had something to do with having witnessed a very eccentric Professor father who would be so preoccupied with his internal life, these daily chores and routines just existed in the margins. One did not have to feed them, they had to feed one’s life- a life that added up to being more than a succession of everyday banal routines. "
― Sakoon Singh , In The Land of The Lovers
2 " Nanaki would be besotted for many hours. She would watch like a novice, like she was in a foreign country, with fresh eyes. Like starting all over again. Like wiping clean a film of experience from eyes and starting afresh, like a child. She would then do a very Chandigarh thing - buy herself a tub of buttered popcorn and continue observing. On days she would get so late that the blue of the sky would deepen into a flush of Prussian. Poor selling boys launched neon frisbees to attract little children taking a walk with parents. The sodium pole lamps would be lit and the water of the bird fountain would become a psychedelic pink. She would continue to observe- not in a way that would make people uncomfortable but in a detached, wholesome way, like she was part of the surroundings. This was also one of the early lessons by her favourite Prof Ramanujan at DCA, who always said that observation was the key. Nature or culture. "
3 " But then, this treachery is at the heart of love. That two people’s needs are never the same. That while it involves fulfillment through another, you understand more about sovereignty. That your desire and the other’s independence of will would always be in an elusive chase. That some might be transiting through love because they are conditioned to do things at appropriate stages, like other life activities, others might be totally transformed by it. That two in love might be looking in one direction but never at the same thing. This struggle to get the lover to see what you see is futile and yet a deep desire. Much later she was to grow up and she learn more. And even though Nanaki felt bereft of love and heart broken and utterly abandoned, even some seemingly seeped in love could be having a heart break. The desire to be understood is primeval too. It might be forgotten for a while in the euphoria of new love. But it resurfaces like a lost child come home. You can’t shut the door. You got to take it in. The tussle then begins. "
4 " She would be asked to climb a low wooden platform in the hall and hold an expression for a class. Students would shuffle their gaze quickly, back and forth from her to their easels to get the details. She felt hugely self conscious to begin with, with two dozen eager eyes gazing at her, taking in her every detail, warts and all, her cheeks flushed and her folded leg trembling involuntarily. She would make an extra effort to cover her front teeth by pulling the lower lip over them. This and her self consciousness would tire her. But a few sessions down and she became used to the attention. And then, also she had also never known such leisure. This sitting idle had its benefits. She realised she would find solution to many a pending question. She would make little budgeting of her savings in her head. Her mind would move from matters of the canteen to Pali’s problem. At times she would so overcome with wretchedness that she would have to deliberately snap out of her thoughts and begin to inaudibly recite the mool mantar. However, all in all, she began to look forward to this. Like zero hour. At the end of what was a fortnight or twenty days of sitting, she was overwhelmed, looking at a studio full of her portraits. "
5 " Blood stains are not easy to remove. Yes, and they will enter the rooms and see my bedding. Perhaps a young girl will fit into my daughter’s clothes. Or it’ll all be a waste because they too lost a young daughter in the vadda raula. These clothes will haunt them. They will want to go back. How crazy! I don’t want to be here and they don’t want to be there. They can’t be here and I can’t be there. How absurd! It is like someone just did it in jest. What value does my life have? Zilch. Nobody thought of this? They live with my nightmares, I live with theirs. And then learn to ignore these sounds I hear from the crevices of the new house. Each night I plug my ears and shut my eyes. A new story over my story. The slate has been wiped clean. With blood. "
6 " It was late evening and as she came out to wear hersneakers, she was met by not a very charitable glance ofanother bhaiji. He always sat there, at the entrance, as a kindof watchman. He commented on Nanaki’s scarf and advisedher to come properly clad in a dupatta. She walked out in ahuff, heckles raised. Who was this man? Who was he to tellher how she ought to be dressed? Whose rules were these?In all honesty, Nanaki’s visit to the gurudwara was her ownpersonal matter. It was more or less an aesthetic experience,feeding a very personal need for which she felt she owed noone an explanation. "
7 " All this had no truck whatsoever with the conditions back home, their travails as marginal farmers, their caste ridden daily struggles, the patriarchal limits on the daily existence of the women. But, really, if you scratched the surface, the colleges were little sanctuaries mirroring the larger social politics, their student politics as ossified and as parochial as the regional politics. Somehow when it came to that, things seem to settle into the old patriarchal, feudal structures with Capitalistic flourishes only outwardly changing appearances. Infact all the more misleading- with modernity being limited to a seductive idea of affluence. "
8 " Yes good one- hold on tight- to ideas. At times, since we are talking so much about birds and all things avian, these flighty things do have a tendency to spread their gossamer wings and take flight. So you haven’t even begun to see it and it disappears from your view. At times you don’t even know how many of these frisky things you thought of and they instantly frolicked their way into some wonderland. There they remain latent. Sometimes for mere moments, sometimes days, sometimes months and years. And then in a flash. They come back without warning, at times stealthily, in our most unguarded moments- in bed, polishing shoes, rolling out a roti, driving or pooping and you are not prepared. They settle tentatively on your sleepy eyes for a second and before you know it, fly past you in a flash again, good for you if you hold them then and there, for if you think you will sit yourself down one day with the wrong end of the pen in your mouth, or the laptop loaded with the works, or the dream paints on the palette, to capture what you saw in your mind’s stratosphere- you just blink and find it’s just a blankness you see, no matter how hard you try, a blankness that stares with a baffling obduracy. At times you even forget that you forgot. The thought had yet not entered your conscious mind- it was just hovering between the sleeping world and the awake, and just falls off the edge. Never makes it. Yes they are flighty things.” She rounded it with a peal of laughter, amused with the little story she had concocted. "
9 " Two kingfishers frolicking amidst branches of a small fig tree. Fleshy petals with streaks of pale yellow hiding a spread of fine black dots, embroidered in gradient with dark shades of saffron gradually giving way to yellow. Two birds alighting from the flower bush: one with its spindly beak , looking upwards- wings spread out, over sized head with a gay blue breast. The creature looked skywards, poised for a higher flight. The one below hovered over stalks of lilies. Its prussian blue head highlighted with lighter shades of blue and its orange body tapering in a stubby tail. One more fig blossom seemingly at a distance from the main frame looked more of a spectral double of its full bodied cousin, while a whole array of vegetation with stalky leaves seen two notches away as shadows embroidered in grey. "
10 " Images of white, semi clad women in colour would be very conspicuous in an otherwise unintelligible newspaper to Nanaki. It was somewhat incongruous to see little pictures, sourced from foreign news agencies, of white women in bikinis, sun tanning on a beach in Zakynthos or a procession of revellers in Sao Paulo complete with exotic costume regalia: trailing pheasant feathers for tails, operatic masks tantalisingly revealing pouty red lips, breasts protruding out of sequinned two pieces, women’s toned derrieres jutting out of glitzy g-strings vibrating animalistically to the samba, shapely legs fitting snugly into gold stilettos. Others showed women walking down the ramp in skimpy lingerie at a Missoni fashion show in Milan. At times these sights would intrigue Nanaki. For her, Urdu was unintelligible, just black marks on paper. Who reads this newspaper? And who are these pictures for? Whose reality is this? "
11 " She felt exhausted: her energy first spent wanting so sorely to return and then accepting the loss as final. As her old life in Okara was fast becoming just a story to be told, she too was becoming irrelevant, like an out-of-use currency, or an old train route, defunct. Her body became slightly bent over and the folds of her skin began to hang loose, like they had lost interest in life. And all like a misunderstanding, like someone your own, someone very close, had tricked you, surreptitiously moved the very roof from over your head. "
12 " They had to start back soon. They were already way behind schedule. Sitting silently on the rear of his bike, she threw back her head, letting the wind run through her hair. It was twilight and she could see the mountains turn into dark indistinct shapes, which together with the spark of lights from a distance, looked strangely mystical. She moved closer to Himmat at this point and instinctively put her arm around his waist. For an instant he released his hand from the bike to touch her arm and put it more firmly in place. She bent forward, resting her whole body on the curve of his back. She could feel his rising and falling breath. The dark of the twilight closed on to their gliding silhouettes. "
