Mango Me

I believe in God. I believe In God because he made mangoes. There surely must be a god who created something as perfect, wild, exceptional as a mango. That Juicy Yellow paisley ball full of sparkling life force. That tingly fresh sugar shock on the tongue and that soothing sensation all the way from down the jaw; to the throat; to the stomach. In the stomach it turns into a golden fire and sends warmth to the blood, heart and lungs. Its heaven! Even the loose motions after an excess diet of mangoes make them more exquisite.

I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t trust people who don’t like to eat mangoes. I think there is something sinister about them. Who knows they may be just from some other planet where people are indifferent, don’t have enough taste buds or just too arrogant to consider mangoes as a fruit worthy of worship. Someday I am going to take up a gun and Kill all of them from the face of this earth. It’s not about the choice or taste. It’s about believing in different Gods.


When I was a Kid there was a ritual of Mango Eating in the whole of Dhindsa family (My mother’s side of the family) coming together to compete with each other. In the larger Farmhouse courtyard there would be mangoes in Steel Buckets floating in the hand pumped water. There would be manjis spread out under huge Mulberry Trees. I would sit near my Nanaji and Mom. They were my good friends and from my Party. Nani and Mama would be far away. They were the enemy party who liked checking who was to have how much and how. It should be criminalised, Checking/disturbing/advising anybody while eating mangoes! There are no absolute canons on how mangoes should be eaten. Although tearing away the skin and eating them while they drip over till your arms is supposed to be a successful method to reach ecstasy. But the Grenade method is fun too. You bite off the black acidic part and pull out the juice of heaven. A little by your hand and a little by suction.

One day says the folklore of my family that I had 5kgs of ripe Dushheris still hot from the plucking in one big go. After that I could barely walk (must have been 6 years!) To acknowledge fend off and make okay everyone’s shock I said something like ‘Aaaj toh Hosh Hi aa gaya’ meaning to say something like ‘This brought me back to my senses’ but to my shock It sent everybody rolling down their seats laughing. Drunk on Mangoes It must have been a very stupid thing to say to people who were still sober. I haven’t made that mistake of declaring my bliss to people who haven’t reached those heights with/without their poisons. I now prefer to eat mangoes in solitude. The world failed me as a child... It’s sad. To not be able to shout loudly and dance naked after eating a mango. I think it’s shameful that we don’t have connoisseurs of mangoes like tea and wine.

I have a friend Sakaar who is from the same planet as mine. He is the kind of man who remembers his childhood friends for the number of Mango trees they had in their houses. ( Saakar now I know why you haven’t made any friends in Delhi) One day we were sitting down over coffee with his group of friends in Chandigarh and he randomly throws this question at his friend who had come to visit him from his engineering college.. ‘Yaar how is that big mango tree in your house?’ The friend a little sadly replied that it had been cut down because of some construction. It angered Sakaar so clearly that he didn’t speak for the next 10 minutes. He went out, withdrew and stopped behaving like any of us were with him. I can completely understand that kind of reaction. It is really painful to know another connection to what gave you joy in childhood has succumbed to the rationality of the Indifferent planet People.


My earliest dream of abundance was of fairies dancing around a laden mango tree. They were just going round and round wearing disco lights on their foreheads. I was a kid so I watched them from distance. My dancing without any real curves on my body then would have disgraced that heavily scene. But I have always carried that dream with me. Someday I will have a garden full of women to dance around a tree laden with luscious yellow mangoes hanging from a tree.

I don’t know if it will sound funny but I even remember checking out men with a qualifier like Does he eat mangoes after meals? A friend from my Planet Rishu Beri helped me in the analysis. ‘Offcourse Yaar I think he is totally like us! Eats mangoes after Dinner.’ I can vouch that Rishu was wrong. That man never went near mangoes. He was the other planet monster. He though it was too ‘AAM’ common a fruit to waste time on. I never believed it then. I still sometimes can’t believe that people can live without awakening to the magic of mangoes. I was so foolish that I would think that he was just being inattentive or rude to me but in truth he must be loving mangoes. A lot of heartbreak later I realised. He didn’t have the stomach for mangoes. He could only deal with other toned down lesser prana food like Maggi and such shitty things. (No wonder he was so constipated all the time)


Anyways not to lose up on the juice of life I must tell you that I have good news. A nutritionist told me that a season full of mangoes supplies year long need of Beta Carotene. Maybe that ought to make you grab a bunch of Dussherries (but why shouldn’t you also grab some Hapoos, Bambaiya, Chausa, Totapari, Neelam, or Langda?) But maybe you don’t know which is which. Maybe you will never make the effort to find out and know that delicate difference in their flavours. Nevermind Enlightenment isn’t for everyone. I have reached can only pray that you reach there one day too. Unless offcourse you are from that Indifferent Planet. In which case Happy Maggi eating to your Ilk. May your Tribe Terminate!

Watching Nimbus Clouds...

If you ever get the chance to sit in a room made of windows located higher up in the mountains you would notice how the clouds resemble thoughts. Big loose fibres of cotton wool flying past you at different speeds like being sucked in and out by a vaccume cleaner. Just like in the nature of our mind where thoughts came from somewhere and go somewhere without any control that can be exercised on those thoughts clouds. One just could watch them like a film being played on television 24 frames per second. 

I kept tugging at memory to recall more about how to watch clouds as told by Diane Ackerman in her book called ‘A Natural History of Senses’. She had written about how as humans we had the accented ability to derive visual pleasure out of the world we saw. The eyes given to us as a species were slowly upgraded over the evolution to be able to perceive minute texture and tones of colours. This tendency to derive pleasure out of watching was so acute that there were examples of how in some places like Northern America even unlikely connoisseurs of visual art like Cowboys would lie down on the grass with their  little daughters and spend endless hours watching cloud turn into elephants camels and apples in the sky.

That morning as I was sitting up on my bed besides a friend, who was peacefully asleep, I loved the metaphor of clouds being like thoughts. It was really like one had caught the essence of the way our mind was assembled and wired. I wanted to follow this metaphor and learn more. It was a lovely place to be. In one’s mind flying with the thoughts or sitting here on my room on the roof in Shogi looking up the clouds swishing past like holy swans.

A huge strand of cloud suddenly blocked my window. For a minute it looked it had blocked everything. It was vanilla white and yet it looked formidable. For some time it looked that there wouldn’t be any other shape passing the sky. This majestic powerful cloud would leave no space for other playful shapes to flirt around my window. It was like that huge ominous thought cloud that eclipsed me for the last 3 years. I remembered the day I had taken it up on myself to give it a good look during me rebirthing it startled me with its immensity. It stretched from one end on my mind to another leaving no room for oxygen or good sense. When it was around I never could have known that It would end or pass or move on! 

Lying warped in the foetal position with my eyes closed I was shocked to see the thoughts of that tall white haired man following me even there in that retreat. He was standing right on my upper aura unconscious and ignorant that he was squeezing my space. He was too big for me to fathom manage or understand. He stood there like a white elephant stamping anything smaller than him under his feet. He could only be moved by might much larger than what I possessed. Lying there huffing and puffing knowing fully well that it was just a meditation retreat I still felt oppressed. I of no might. I the small playful cloud had been trampled upon by this big white majestic elephant even as I felt one with him in his majesty and grace. I shuddered shrieked and cried and my teacher came to me. She held my hand and sat by me, rubbing my hand. Just saying let it be..it will pass..After sometime that big cloudy gloom cleared up at the window. A little pitter patter started on the roof. That was nature’s way of washing big stubborn clouds.

Again the sky became a place action like a radio whose on and off button goes bad and it always keeps catching one thing or the other. On the window there were other magical shapes flying past me at a lovely comfortable speed. I could see Taradevi temple on the peak straight in line with my nose. I hadn’t been to the temple but I wondered if it would be the same Taradevi who is supposed to be a manifestation of the third eye of Devi. The tantric godess with skulls hanging around her .

As I tried to remember the process of formation of clouds to know them better at my renewed attempt to be pally with them all those stupid diagrams in my 10 th Standard Geography book called Monsoon Asia came alive. I was 16 when I read that and instead of getting to know about clouds I got interested in my geography teacher. His name was Joseph Francis, he was a tall dark and handsome army man with little imagination to be a teacher and yet he got me thinking about Asian monsoon like nobody else! He never talked about his family and he always used to give me a wicked smile at my glazed look at him. I still blame him for not teaching me about different kind of clouds in Asia.

So many layers of life fitting like a puzzle in the sky and in my mind like bulbous clouds. It was such a fascinating magical thing to possess a mind full of clouds. This mind that sometimes was sick of things passing by or staying too long. It felt good to know however that whatever came in the shape of a cloud would pass like a cloud. And everything that Monday morning from my hotel room looked like a cloud. Jobs, friends, dreams, enemies, blocks, money, journeys, lust everything was cloud which came floating to me in some strange alien shape that I could never have chiselled into my liking, but only followed kindly with my eyes.

It was such epiphany to watch clouds for those two hours that morning. I had to strain my eyes and then keep them loose. Sometimes I had to fit a shape at the corner of my eye; the cloud moved faaar away from my limited vision. They turned pink and they expanded and shrinked and went on and on. They followed some strange suction of the heaven and they went with the flow, effortlessly. They didn’t care if I watched or not. I suffer from myopia and cylindrical vision. I looked at those clouds from scratched glassed and less than perfect eyes. But by and large I followed their dance. I think it’s a good sport. Watching Nimbus clouds! 

Tu Tu Tu Tu Tara Times...

Do you remember the Juhi Chawla of ‘Gazab ka hai din dekho zara’ . a plaid half tied, hair frizzy and some strange funny sari she is wearing. Then there is Amir Khan the painfully stressed man who is not interested in singing the song in the song! I loved it. Men were always supposed to be like that, painfully not joining in the song that they starred in! Alas I never got stranded in a jungle with any Amir Khan but hey a crazy girl like me did!
Juhi Chawala the girl from Ambala who looked so foolish when she laughed that almost all of us Plain Janes looked embarrassedly at the screen. She bubbled and fizzled and sparkled and was so much fun! Rememeber that song ‘Mumbai se gayi delhi, delhi se gayi pune pune se gayi patnaaaaaaa...fir bhi na mila sajna’ {ditto for me baby ditto for me} She was no screen goddess here like Sridevi( who I loved but couldn’t have resembled) Or Madhuri Dixit( who I worshipped for her grace and femininity) Here is a girl who danced funny looked funny and was funny!
She could do comedy and also get to romance the heroes. It was never permissible before she came in. And yet she did the same matka dances, the Switzerland dances and the tut u tut u tara dances with a andropausal Rishi Kapoor (who says mens age doesn’t show on screen!)
Darr made a goddess out of her. The pretty woman who had a man crazy enough to kill for her. I lost her there. This wasn’t happening to me. Ever Ever. I wouldn’t let it. I wasn’t the vulnerable type. It wasn’t my story or no other girl I knew. Plain Janes have a way of controlling how much attention they want from any man. She became too pretty there to be the same inelegant sweetheart that we loved.
There she was flaming the fantasy of a crazy intense man and she didn’t want him later! Then why was she singing ‘Toot gayi toot ke main chooor ho gayi..teri zid se majboor ho gayi’ I was utterly confused! Was it about yielding after the man had proven himself again and again? Letters written in blood, beseeching phone calls, thrashing up all the other men in the neighbourhood! Was that where we were going? Not me!But who can deny that she looked prettiest in Darr. Remember that orange costume? ‘The Jadooo teri nazarrr, Khusboo teraaa badan!’ where the bubbling pearly white smile suddenly became demure where all these years it was reckless uncalculating! Did the smile change?I don’t know!
I hated the buddy exchanges between her and Sharukh Khan splashed in the media. They are best friends. They are such Buddies. It was all over the papers. More visually then her husband and her kids. The other routine life that she had chosen for herself was overshadowed by these vibrations of a high flying friendship between this hi chemistry couple! But they were both faithful to their spouses!!! Precisely my point! So why were we bombarded with this chemistry that never went anywhere?
The last few films after the fire went out were also quite nice. I loved the woman in ‘Teen Dewarien’ Here was a woman not dependent on her chemistry with another man to occupy the screen. At least not romantic chemistry for god’s sake. She looked so lovely in those handloom saris talking business to the rogue Naseeruddin Shaw the film. There was a comfort and grace that had come by now. It wasn’t the fizzling smiling in all scenes Juhi Chawala.
Then Offcourse there was Juhi of ‘My Brother Nikhil.’ The same wholesome real life girl. A lovely understated performance.
And yet I know when my grandchildren sit down to watch some retrospective on her I would only recall the crazy zingo bingo mad girl dancing those insane steps with a handknit sweater clad rishi kapoor paining to keep pace with her energy. She danced too fast and smiled too much! And was too uninhibited for those not of her generation. I remember the elder women of my family wistfully longing for the Madhubalas and Sharmila Tagore and Rekhas grace. Times had changed and the bridges of feminity like Sridevi were fading
Tu Tu Tu Tara was my impressionable girlhood time. I have henceforth internalised the rule that its okay for women to be gyrating madly to slapdash rhythms. She was the prototype that I had from Bolywood. I am amazed so soon and she looks like a far away yesterday amidst the Deepika Padukones and Katrinas of the world. I miss that clumsy heroine who left her heroes out of breath with her loud laughter. I know Tu Tu Tara times have gone away. But have you noticed how the screen sizzles everytime thet repeat that song on TV. It is just like it was back then. Do you remember?

Starfish Hotel

Its one of those films that I watched in utter darkness. I was studying in Jamia, Had come to Osian to watch films, Was Hoping for friends to join me, Nobody did! So I watched it in my own darkness (and that of the hall and the sickly cool AC of Audi 1 smelling of sweat dried in the ac..It was July 2006!)

By then offcourse one had seen some Japnese Cinema in the media appreciation classes of Rashmi Duraiswamy and Shohini Ghosh so one knew what Mizoguchi and Kirosawas of the world.But this(starfish hotel) was a different paradigm alltogether. It was made by John Williams a British Guy and no trailer of the film would have made me interseted in it. I went in by what they call pure coincidence! And the first viewing a sharp gasping cut on my person~It was unlike anything I had seen before! It was vague, haunting beautiful and full of breath!

Think of story like this which comes in snatches. You are not even sure if you are sitting to follow the story or collectr it in your litttle palm at the end of it! It just flies away like dust in the air!

A mystery novelist selling his dark books,A growing ennui in a restless city of Tokyo. A sober graceful man with a waif like wife who loves him and is absent on him all the time. A distance growing in their marriage that steaming lunch of avocados and bubling tea in an electric kettle dont seem to cure. A woman, another woman! Young, Vulnerable and hellishly beautiful like a fox. A landscape of dollops of ice over and above every house and a dark lunatic Rabbit haunting every train ride of a man always sombre even when making love to a starnger in a dark tunnel!

What about it was reverbrating so deep? I shuddered. Avoided. And finally started exploring..I knew there would be no easy answers to this one. Just like I know It could have been a hit film in any part of the world. It was a crazy film!

For one the cinematography was magical. The red blinking sign of the hotel where all the dark fantasies of Arisu came true was beyond this world. The red starfish hotel neon had a blinking O. The big O that flickered, blinked, sparked and caught fire. The lonely train stations which were so claustrophobic that one palpitated in a overtly cooled Sirifort Audi 1. There were times, long streches when you felt nothing was happening. You could just breathe in the Ice Of Tokyo and the dark town the man went to meet his mistress. The times the itching Villian in the film( half rabbit half man) jumped into gutters and scratched his skin blotch. The pretty poker straight wife with a peaceful face who kept hinting at having lost that spark in the marriage and yet never said it loud enough to make the husband take notice that she would walk away one day. To a brothel and no place less!!!

The strange thing that the film doesnt rest on the skelton of a story. For there is hardly a story. Its just a situation. A man, a wife and another woman. The wife who ceases to be a woman. And an other woman who is half child, half a geisha, half a spirit from the unconscious world.

The eternal darkness brewing within everyone. Something that cant be defeated. Only calmly breathed in and accepted. Just like in the film, where you try and get knocked in off trying to get the hang of it..You walk out dumb, numb and acutely aware that you know something about yourself now thats not good news and yet its not something that you could defeat avoid or run away from.

PS- I love Japnese Cinema. I think they should stick to making films rather than low grade cameras and Nippo Batteries